by Jhumpa Lahiri
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Product Description
Navigating between the Indian traditions they've inherited and the baffling new world, the characters in Jhumpa Lahiri's elegant, touching stories seek love beyond the barriers of culture and generations. In "A Temporary Matter," published in The New Yorker, a young Indian-American couple faces the heartbreak of a stillborn birth while their Boston neighborhood copes with a nightly blackout. In the title story, an interpreter guides an American family through the India of their ancestors and hears an astonishing confession. Lahiri writes with deft cultural insight reminiscent of Anita Desai and a nuanced depth that recalls Mavis Gallant. She is an important and powerful new voice.
Amazon.com Review
Mr. Kapasi, the protagonist of Jhumpa Lahiri's title story, would certainly have his work cut out for him if he were forced to interpret the maladies of all the characters in this eloquent debut collection. Take, for example, Shoba and Shukumar, the young couple in "A Temporary Matter" whose marriage is crumbling in the wake of a stillborn child. Or Miranda in "Sexy," who is involved in a hopeless affair with a married man. But Mr. Kapasi has problems enough of his own; in addition to his regular job working as an interpreter for a doctor who does not speak his patients' language, he also drives tourists to local sites of interest. His fare on this particular day is Mr. and Mrs. Das--first-generation Americans of Indian descent--and their children. During the course of the afternoon, Mr. Kapasi becomes enamored of Mrs. Das and then becomes her unwilling confidant when she reads too much into his profession. "I told you because of your talents," she informs him after divulging a startling secret. I'm tired of feeling so terrible all the time. Eight years, Mr. Kapasi, I've been in pain eight years. I was hoping you could help me feel better; say the right thing. Suggest some kind of remedy. Of course, Mr. Kapasi has no cure for what ails Mrs. Das--or himself. Lahiri's subtle, bittersweet ending is characteristic of the collection as a whole. Some of these nine tales are set in India, others in the United States, and most concern characters of Indian heritage. Yet the situations Lahiri's people face, from unhappy marriages to civil war, transcend ethnicity. As the narrator of the last story, "The Third and Final Continent," comments: "There are times I am bewildered by each mile I have traveled, each meal I have eaten, each person I have known, each room in which I have slept." In that single line Jhumpa Lahiri sums up a universal experience, one that applies to all who have grown up, left home, fallen in or out of love, and, above all, experienced what it means to be a foreigner, even within one's own family. --Alix Wilber
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0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 The Race Novel as a new genre or can I just call it Starbucks Lit?, 2008-12-03
I had been practicing speed reading over the course of a few books. Simultaneously reading Dickens's "David Copperfield" and Solzhenitsyn's "Gulag Archipelago," there were moments in those books when my pace halted to a screech in the presence of a crystalline line. With Lahiri's book, I decided I could take my time with such a slim volume, after all Raymond Carver (and Gordon Lish) were able to pack so much punch into 2-3 pages. Remarkably, I trudged from one paragraph to another in Lahiri's book, impoverished of any moments of wonder. I did stop to reread certain paragraphs, attempting to discover why the author often needed to include (or pad) in her prose, several lines that did not add in any way - rhythmically, cadence-wise, or symbolically - to the story. There's barely a trace of a narrative voice as one dry sentence after another gets dispatched like an instruction manual on technical writing. And that's when I came to this conclusion:
The book is written in the style of a generic YA (young adult) novel. Short, simple sentences that often have a few minor phrases made mysterious depending only on how hard a reader attempts to "read" into it. I do like an oblique method of storytelling and oftentimes, the meaning is hidden in simplicity, but when you have to strain your interpretive imagination to read into the textbook-like sentences of banal details (to the point where your mind is running wild at the reasons why superfluous sentences were added ), it seems like a work that is only half done.
It's no surprise Amy Tan's praises were featured in the back of the bookcover. As an expat myself, I have often noticed there are many Westerners who feel comfortable with discussing only things connected to my race. Regardless of how much authentic geographic connection you have to your race, as long as you talk about, elaborate on, and discuss your non-Western culture, then not only is your identity easily recognizable, you can sustain a level of safe fascination.
In this manner, Lahiri's stories are unceasing in their insistent on an Indian identity, continually reaffirming a sense of exoticism that has always been a cash cow to non-white writers. Since Lahiri was born in London, then moved to Rhode Island, USA, I find it puzzling that she continues, to this day, to bank on an immigrant Indian status. I am not a fan of the Diaspora lit genre that made Amy Tan famous; it seems authors in this genre feel a calling to pretensions of "keeping it real" by staying within the confines of an identity that caters to the feel-good plurality of readers in the West.
Don't get me wrong, I am thrilled whenever non-Western writers enter the canon of dead white male authors. I rushed out to get my copy of Moth Smoke when it came out and Satanic Verses remains one of my all-time beloved novels. Lahiri's success may encourage following generations of Western non-white writers to emulate her path to success by writing about their race AS their sole identity. Other writers will explore and go to bold new places where many writers have yet to discover, but non-white authors will stagnate in the only place they are *allowed* to succeed. And they don't even have to be good at it. The fact that Pulitzer patronizes this piece of work should not fool the more astute in the public. It conditions and confines up-and-coming non-white writers to work in a style that is mediocre, protected only by the kidgloves of political correctness.
The most telling story in Interpreter of Maladies is a story of the same title. An American-born Indian woman, vacationing in India with her husband, utilizes the services of an Indian tour guide who also acts as an interpreter for Indian patients at a local doctor's office. She incorrectly exotifies this interpreter as a simulacrum for a real doctor, and proceeds to confide her infidelity to him. Not only does the interpreter understand that she, as an American Indian woman, has the luxury and mobility to enter and leave the Indian culture as a commodity, but when her attempts to find a cure from him meet with failure, she inadvertently discards him.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
 What a beautiful collection!, 2008-11-22
First off, I can't believe that I have never read this before. Maybe because the Pulitzer Prize was won, I figured that the stories would be too difficult to read or understand. Even though I really loved only 5 of the stories, the other 4 were enjoyable, I just didn't like them as much as the former.
My favorities were: A Temporary Matter, about a young couple who happened to have electricity disconnected for one hour each day, to repair the lines after a snowstorm. The couple also seems to be disconnected, from each other, but this hour each night was the beginning to bring them together.
I also loved: When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine about a man who had left his country and his family (a wife and seven daughters) so that he could make money to take care of them, and eventually go back. This couple with a young daughter were looking for Indian acquaintances to connect with. So, they took in Mr. Pirzada most nights for dinner and tv afterward. The story is told through the eyes of the young girl, where both had learned something. She, the meaning of love and family, and he, the meaning of the word, "thank you."
One of the best was Interpreter of Maladies, the title story, about a young Indian couple with children, who were very americanized. They visited India every few years to see their parents. Mr. Kapasi was their chaparone, driving them to the Sun Temple at Konarak. The couple appeared to be not at all engaged with their children, but mostly with themselves, viewed through the eyes of Mr. Kapasi. Mr Kapasi seemed enamored with Mrs. Das, and maybe he misunderstood her actions. It made me laugh, and feel sad at the same time, because it reminded me of some older men, and how they believe that they can win the affections of younger women, just because they were once good looking and virile.
Sexy was a good story with a touch of irony because Laxmi always talks to her co-worker Miranda about how her cousin was left by her husband for another woman. Meanwhile, Miranda is the other woman with another married man. It reminded me how affairs or even love affairs fall away without one or both of the parties keeping it alive.
Mrs. Sen's was enjoyable about an older woman married to a professor, who watched a young boy in her home. She didn't know how to drive, so whenever she needed to pick something up at the store, she would have to call her husband to pick them up, bring them to the store, drop them off, and go back to work. She was learning how to drive, but wasn't quite ready. I liked the way that you see how Mrs. Sen affected Eliot more than his own mom.
The Third and Final Continent, the last story in the collection was my favorite of all. It was about a man, who left India, to go to America, working in Boston. He moved into an older ladies house, who hardly moved from her piano bench and only ate soup, because she had stopped eating solids years ago, and she was 103 years old. She would always talk to the man, about how there is a flag on the moon, and she always asked him if he locked the door. Even with only these simple conversations, he always remembered Mrs. Croft, even after he left to move in with his wife. She had a great impact on him.
The stories and characters are not connected, except for the fact that the characters are Indian. I loved to read about the culture, what they would eat, and how they would run their homes. The writing is simple and beautiful where the writer would show, but not tell you what was going on. Each story had an element of sadness in it, and some laughs too, but the last story brought tears to my eyes. I loved seeing how Jhumpa Lahiri captured the interconnectedness of humans, across all boundries, and I hope to read her books again soon.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
 Strange Maladies for Sure, 2008-10-17
Early on in the book I was reminded of Eric Berne's work of forty years ago...which he titled Games People Play in an attempt to describe both functional and dysfunctional social interactions.
Berne described the types of social interactions. Now comes Jhumpa Lahiri with her extraordinary talent which allows her to describe how these people communicate with each other and more amazingly, what they say when they communicate with themselves.
She is truly an Interpreter of Maladies and as Frederick Busch noted in his oft quoted praise of her Pulitizer.... "Lahiri honors the vastness and variousness of the world."
I suspect there are few people who suffer from such maladies but they need an interpreter just like everyone else, I suppose.
And Ms. Lahiri is a good one.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
It Gets Better As You Read It, 2008-09-05
Interpreter of Maladies
I was interested in Jhumpa Lahiri's books because I read some good reviews of them. I also like books about different cultures. At first, I was dissabpointed in these stories. I liked the way she developed the characters and the settings, but the first several stories seemed too tragic. At the end, we were left with little sense of hope for the character's future. The later two or three stories in the book are better. The give you a sense of the lives of the people and also the reader gets a sense that things are not perfect, but there is at least a chance that the character will find some happiness. I would reccommend this book just for the fascinating writing style and character development.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
One of the best books I've ever read, 2008-08-16
To give a frame of reference, some of my favorite authors are Margaret Atwood and Barbara Kingsolver. I have searched and searched for another introspective, intelligent, strong female voice, and finally I have found it. I plan on buying every one of her books and keeping them forever. In this book alone, my wisdom cache has increased, certainly the mark of a great book.
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