Themes of immigration, of the struggle to understand a new culture, permeate Jhumpa Lahiri's Pulitzer Prize-winning collection of short stories, Interpreter of Maladies. It's not necessarily the central point of every story, though...while all of them do feature Indian people, there are two that are set in India among Indians, and a few of them have white people as main characters. The stories cover a variety of situations, from a young couple struggling to reconnect after a tragedy to second-generation Indians traveling to the country of their parents' birth. Loneliness and disconnection are everywhere, and while many of the stories are more-or-less sad, there are also moments of levity and humor and on the whole this is surprisingly not a bummer collection to read.

I struggle so hard with conveying my thoughts on short stories, y'all, unless they're of the "interlinked" variety. For my money, this is a strong but (as almost always) uneven collection of work. My favorite stories were the opener ("A Temporary Matter") and the closer ("The Third and Final Continent"). That first one, about a couple reconnecting during a utility blackout, was a total incredible gut-punch and had me psyched for more of the same. And while there are high moments (like "This Blessed House", about a couple who keep finding tacky Christian decor in their new home and the tension between the husband and wife about what to do with it, which I found incredibly funny, and the not-at-all-funny-but-heartwrenching "Mrs. Sen's", about a preteen being babysat by a desperately lonely young Indian housewife), nothing comes close again to the impact of the first story until the last one, which relates the tale of a young Indian man who has just moved to the US and his very elderly white landlady.

All of the stories are very technically accomplished...they're well written, the characters are vivid, the prose is insightful. As someone with no gift at all for creative writing, I admire short stories almost more than I do novels. To tell a whole story that emotionally resonates in a limited page count is something fiendishly difficult, and Lahiri does it beautifully. While some of the stories are more closely related than others (there's no crossover in any of them), they all feel like they belong, nothing feels shoehorned in. Even some of the weaker stories, like "Sexy", have moments that I find indelible and remain with me even after reading several more books since I finished this one. If you like short stories, I'd highly recommend this. If you like Lahiri's work generally, I'd also recommend it. There's a reason this one won the Pulitzer: it's very good. ( )

A beautifully written collection of short stories about the experience of immigrant Bengalis to America. The book fully deserves the multiple prizes it won: the Pulitzer Prize 2000, Pen/Hemingway Award (2000), New Yorker’s Debut Book of the Year (2000) and the Puddly Award for Short Stories (2001).

The author is of Bengali heritage, was born in England and brought up in America. There are about 250 million Bengalis in the subcontinent, about 2/3 making up the Muslim nation of Bangladesh and about 1/3, mostly Hindus, in West Bengal, a state in India with Kolkata (formerly Calcutta) its major city. The stories mention the Partition of India when Pakistan was separated off from India by the departing British to create a Muslim homeland. Later when West Pakistan began to insist on Urdu as its official language and to oppress the Bengali people and their language, East Pakistan broke off and became the independent country of Bangladesh.

The stories are a poignant collection of loss, longing, and trying to come to terms with the unfamiliar.

A Temporary Matter: A married couple, Shukumar and Shoba, have drifted apart and begun to live separate lives until a four night power outage brings them together again.

When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine: Mr. Pirzada is a botany professor from Dhaka studying in America who is befriended by an Indian family and their young daughter. Together they watch the news every night about the Bangladesh Independence War and worry about the wife and seven daughters he has left behind.

Interpreter of Maladies: An American born couple of Indian heritage visit India with their family and hire Mr. Kapasi, a tour guide and Gujurati interpreter for the day. Their self absorbed ways and offhanded parenting style shock him somewhat and illustrates the differences between the two countries.

A Real Durwan: Boori Ma is a 64-year-old woman from Calcutta who is the stairsweeper, of an old brick building, who the residents allow to sleep in front of the gates leading into the tenement.

Sexy: Miranda meets regularly with her Indian colleague, and hears her outrage about her cousin’s husband leaving her for a white woman. She is afraid to admit that she herself is having an affair with a married Indian man named Dev. After a while the affair loses some of its sparkle.

Mrs. Sen's: 11-year-old Eliot begins being babysat after school by Mrs. Sen, a lonely Indian university professor's wife. As she chops and prepares food she tells Eliot stories of her past life in Calcutta and shares her homesickness.

This Blessed House: Sanjeev and Twinkle have moved into a new house in Connecticut. They keep finding religious icons hidden throughout the house. Sanjeev seems to find Twinkle and her simple delight in life irritating although everyone else finds her charming.

The Treatment of Bibi Haldar: 29-year-old Bibi Haldar has an incurable mysterious ailment and so remains shunned by society. Her greatest longing is to be married with children.

The Third and Final Continent: The narrator lives in India, then moves to London, then finally to America. While awaiting the arrival of his new wife from India, his first home in America is boarding with a cantankerous 103 year old woman who unknowingly changes their lives and perceptions of each other.

This is an insightful book that I would highly recommend. ( )

An incredible debut collection; each story is so tightly constructed and carefully written. The language is in some ways spare but has beautiful rhythms (prosody? is that the word I mean here? perhaps). Luminous. ( )

My reading of Interpreter of Maladies was interrupted by the need to read several other books that demanded immediate attention. But I found that I kept longing to get back to the delights of Jhumpa Lahiri. I'm a fan because she writes with such deft precision.

The blouse was decorated at chest-level with a calico applique in the shape of a strawberry. She was a short woman, with small hands like paws, her frosty pink finger-nails painted to match her lips, and was slightly plump in her figure. p. 46

I marvel at how she can draw character so effortlessly.

This collection of stories are all entire unto themselves but, as in [b:Whereabouts|56221722|Whereabouts|Jhumpa Lahiri|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1607444569l/56221722._SY75_.jpg|64910967] in fact, all Lahiri's books that I've read, fragments seem to fit together into a larger whole where the frailty of humanity is not exploited but celebrated. I wept at the end of the last story which seemed to draw a thread that brought all the stories together. So quietly delicate in its intensity.
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The author writes these stories so that I feel wonderfully present in each of them, in each of her characters. It's a quiet collection of every day people living ordinary lives, but the best of them pulled at my heart and emotions, with love and resentment and longing and disappointment. I will be looking for more of her work to read.

Paperback, picked up at a Friends of the Library sale, still with its library stickers and bar codes, pages comfortably bent and wrinkled and stained. I love the signs that many before me have had the opportunity to enjoy it. ( )