[(review date January-February 2009) In the following positive review, Rendon analyzes the strong appeal of the stories in Unaccustomed Earth.]
Unaccustomed Earth is Jhumpa Lahiri's second collection of short stories, and her third book. Her first collection of stories, Interpreter of Maladies (2000), won her the Pulitzer and her second book, The Namesake (2003), a novel, was made into a film by Mira Nair in 2007. In Unaccustomed Earth, Lahiri offers us eight stories that continue her examination of expatriate Bengalis abroad (mainly in the U.S.) and that of their children. Some of her characters break the rules and what is expected of them, others find themselves returning gratefully to familiar, prescribed terrain, particularly in the realm of marriage. These are contemporary tales that take many modern realities into account, including the increasingly multi-ethnic character of life in the U.S. and...