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From the internationally best-selling, Pulitzer Prize–winning author, a superbly crafted new work of fiction: eight stories—longer and more emotionally complex than any she has yet written—that take us from Cambridge and Seattle to India and Thailand as they enter the lives of sisters and brothers, fathers and mothers, daughters and sons, friends and lovers.

In the stunning title story, Ruma, a young mother in a new city, is visited by her father, who carefully tends the earth of her garden, where he and his grandson form a special bond. But he’s harboring a secret from his daughter, a love affair he’s keeping all to himself. In “A Choice of Accommodations,” a husband’s attempt to turn an old friend’s wedding into a romantic getaway weekend with his wife takes a dark, revealing turn as the party lasts deep into the night. In “Only Goodness,” a sister eager to give her younger brother the perfect childhood she never had is overwhelmed by guilt, anguish, and anger when his alcoholism threatens her family. And in “Hema and Kaushik,” a trio of linked stories—a luminous, intensely compelling elegy of life, death, love, and fate—we follow the lives of a girl and boy who, one winter, share a house in Massachusetts. They travel from innocence to experience on separate, sometimes painful paths, until destiny brings them together again years later in Rome.

Unaccustomed Earth is rich with Jhumpa Lahiri’s signature gifts: exquisite prose, emotional wisdom, and subtle renderings of the most intricate workings of the heart and mind. It is a masterful, dazzling work of a writer at the peak of her powers.

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Lahiri shows her growth as a writer

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Lahiri's stories are described as a slow burn. This is most evident in this collection. Each story seemingly plods on, but at the end of each one, the reader sees it all come together. I absolutely loved the final story, which was more like a novella. It perfectly described the joys and pitfalls of illicit romance. I felt as if this collection took on cultural identity in a more subtle way than Lahiri's two other books. The characters are all Bengali, but they are somehow also more American than the characters in 'Interpreter of Maladies' and 'The Namesake'. I don't know if this is a function of Lahiri growing as a writer or if it was done intentionally. Either way, she's done a bang up job.

I was sad to leave the characters	Customer Rating:
Unaccustomed Earth is a wonderful collection of stories that you are so sad to leave at the end of each one. A book that doesn't leave you. I am so happy that I found it.

An Unaccustomed Joy

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When Jhumpa Lahiri's Pulitzer Prize winning volume of short stories, "The Interpreter of Maladies" was published, I didn't read it. For one thing, I'd just read Vikram Seth's "A Suitable Boy" and Rohinton Mistry's "Family Matters," and while I absolutely loved both books, I was suffering from a surfeit of Indian fiction, at least at that time. But more than that, I gave "The Interpreter of Maladies" a pass because of all the hype. I've been let down by hype in the past. More than once. Surely the book couldn't be that good, I told myself. Surely Lahiri's prose wasn't that sparkling and fresh. When "Unaccustomed Earth," Lahiri's third book of longer short stories was released, I'd "sort of" decided to give it a pass as well. I have plenty to read and didn't really need anything new. However, I was shopping the other day and there was the book, lying on a table right in front of me. I couldn't resist. But please keep in mind, I approached the book with a mind to dislike it. Suffice to say, I was astounded at the beauty and grace in Lahiri's stories. No, the plots aren't much to speak of. Nothing earth shattering really happens. These are just normal people leading normal lives. Yes, they're Bengali-Americans, but so what? What's really important is that they could be Irish or Russian or German or English. Lahiri writes about the universality of the human experience, not about experiences that are unique to Bengalis or Bengali-Americans. I've never been to India, and I know few people of Indian descent, but I related totally to the characters in "Unaccustomed Earth." I felt their pain, their loneliness, their striving for happiness. Lahiri, I learned, writes about the human heart, and the human heart, I think, is the same the world over. It doesn't matter if one's Bengali, South African, Dutch, or Chinese. Lahiri's prose is spare and unadorned, but I was so impressed by its tremendous emotional depth and understanding, as well as Lahiri's unwavering eye for detail. All her characters came to life for me, even the minor ones. Personally, I can't understand criticism of Lahiri because she writes about Bengali-Americans. Doesn't Alice Munro write about Canadians? Doesn't William Trevor write about the Irish? Did Chekhov write about Russians and Eudora Welty about people of the American South? No, I wouldn't be able to read Lahiri every day. But neither would I be able to read Alice Munro or Chekhov every day. That takes nothing away from their writing or their mastery. Though I liked some of the stories better than others, I think this was just a matter of personal preference. I didn't find the stories uneven. I didn't think one was weaker than the others or one significantly stronger, another testament to Lahiri's power as a writer. If I have any criticism of Lahiri at all, it's that she doesn't include more humor in her stories. Oh, I don't mean she should write comic stories. Far from it. But life, someone reminded me the other day, is both comic and tragic, and to exclude one in favor of the other is to diminish truth. I'd like to see a little, not a lot, just a little, understated humor in Lahiri's stories. If you're new to Lahiri's writing, "Unaccustomed Earth" isn't a bad place to start. These are rich, deeply emotional stories, the stories of an emotionally mature writer, but they're also very, very restrained and understated. As for me, I'll be moving on to Lahiri's first novel, "The Namesake," and this time, I won't approach it with anything but admiration and respect.

Well Worth Reading	Customer Rating:
Another great work by Jhumpa Lahiri. It's nice to find a consistent writer that is never a disappointment.

Unaccustomed praise?

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...not by today's standards! I have read this author's earlier work and actually enjoyed some of the stories in her collection from a few years back. But deserving of a Pulitzer? In all fairness, I must say that it seems as though one must now be ethnic and from a Third World country to get any literary recognition in this fair United States these days. I'd say this might be a good thing if these writers were really coming from difficulty and struggle. But that is not the case with these ethnic immigrant writers of today. If one is as privileged as Ms. Lahiri has been, (and there are many), you will go to the correct top tier Ivy League schools, which will give you correct entry to the publishing circle elite. Let me just say that I welcome varied experience; I am all for different perspectives-but what's missing here is the grit of life. We can't help but see that Lahiri's dramas are rather predictable, shallow and simply not constituting the very stuff of which great fiction is made. To wit: the greatest writers, to me, never entered an MFA program or Ivy League type of school. I think this is true today as any. Could you imagine Henry Miller, Mark Twain, Dickenson, Gogol, Austen, Whitman, George Eliot et al, coming out of the precious Iowa School or any other assortment of MFA programs? I think not. What constitutes such a lustrous and exquisite rendering of life is life itself. And those great writers lived it. Sad to say this no longer seems to be the case. And our expectations are so lowered as a result of it. Some of my favorite books this year are from writers who are not granted such recognition as this one is. For starters, check out the lesser known, SIM0N LAZARUS, a breath-taking story I can't stop thinking about.