Unaccustomed Earth

“Fiction reveals truths that reality obscures”
With her immigrant characters and their Americanised sons and daughters, Jhumpa Lahiri tries to reveal the truth of immigrant life in her latest offering “Unaccustomed Earth”.

After her debut short story collection “Interpreter of Maladies” and novel turned motion picture “The Namesake”, expectations were surely high and she had lived up to them. All the stories in Unaccustomed Earth are based on the Bengali immigrant experiences in America while chasing their dreams and lives.

In the title story, a widower’s new found independence surprises her daughter Ruma and proves her all vexations about inviting him to move in her house wrong, he declines her proposal in the pursuit of enjoy his rest of life with his new companion “a girlfriend”.

As the synopsis reads “Everyone has their secrets”, Lahiri is her wittingly simple presentation goes on to carefully reveal all the secrets that engulf the readers in a compelling emotional landscape.

Book is divided in two sections; first section has four stories “Unaccustomed Earth”, “Hell-Heaven”, “Only Goodness” and "A Choice of Accommodations", while the other section titled “Hema & Kaushik” takes the readers to a journey as 16-year-old Kaushik and his family, having returned from India, move in with 14-year-old Hema and her parents. His parents are searching for a house, and the month long sojourn marks both teenagers in profound ways. Kaushik's revelation of the true reason for their return shocks Hema out of her childhood innocence. Her crush on Kaushik could not find a suitable way out until after 25 years, when they meet again after bearing so much of turmoil in their lives. But destiny had something else written for them.

Travelling through their lives, Lahiri emerges a true storyteller, in the course of three stories; she subtly acquaints us through the load of expectations that Bengali immigrant parents push on their children, who some times fail and some times rise to the expectations.