Unaccustomed Earth - Jhumpa Lahiri

I enjoyed Lahiri's novel The Namesake, and I have her Pulitzer-prize winning collection of stories, Interpreter of Maladies, sitting on my shelves at home. So, when I saw she'd come out with a new collection, I figured I better get in line at the library - I was 104th in line, so I was very happy when my wonderful friend Nisha lent me her copy. All of the stories in Unaccustomed Earth feature Bengali characters living in the United States. Some are immigrants, others are the children of immigrants - all find themselves struggling with their place between two cultures - and many find themselves attracted to people who don't speak their native language, don't understand their customs and values, and certainly don't look like them. I have a fascination with characters who see themselves as "others," so on a basic level, these stories appealed to me. One of the issues I have with the short story form is that the climax often seems to come in the last page or two - it always reminds me of my favorite J.D. Salinger story "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" where the main character stumbles through the story performing mundane everyday tasks, only to come back to his hotel room at the end, put a shot gun in his mouth and pull the trigger. Lahiri, for the most part, adheres to this need to have a shocking end to all her stories and for this reason, as I came to the end of each one, I found my anxiety growing, hoping that a given character wouldn't suddenly be killed off, have their heart-broken, or otherwise be destroyed. The subject matter of the stories is pretty depressing: lost-love, alcoholism, death of a parent, infidelity...but Lahiri's writing is intoxicating, and I found myself wanting to read everything in one sitting, while at the same time trying to savor each story. The final three stories in the book concern the same two main characters. Other than the fact that the subject matter of these three stories is similar to the others in the collection, it seemed that it would have been better to spin them off into their own book. But, despite my small critcisms, I found each story in this book simply amazing. I see many more awards in Lahiri's future.