| | This is the 4th of 12 for the Book Awards Reading Challenge. In 1999, the collection of short stories Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri won the PEN/Hemingway Award (Best Fiction Debut of the Year). Some stories are about the problems of immigrants or their second generation kids who have lost their cultural moorings. But the characters are familiar in that they are mainly middle-class intellectuals, the kind of academics and knowledge/service industry folks, who happen to be of Bengali descent. The topics are ordinary enough, too, for anybody to connect with, like troubled marriages (oh, those feckless men) and the helplessness of people when life throws spectacular unfairness their way. The writing is clear and understated, almost bland in places. She has a good touch with details. Read one at a time; otherwise,they may begin to feel a little formulaic. Readers that like the stories The New Yorker runs will probably like these stories.
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| | Posted 3/9/2009 5:40 AM - 26 Views - 0 eProps - 0 comments
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