Someone who hasn’t heard about Jhumpa Lahiri’s award winning collection of short stories yet, hasn’t been paying attention. This is the 9.178th review on the book, and I’m the 140.434th Goodreads member to rate it. My review will probably land somewhere on the 30th spot. Not at all because it’s good, but because I was lucky to have found supportive friends, who understand how important it is for a person to get a little attention and to be able to share their experiences with others. We understand each other; reading is a solitary occupation and being able to share that in a group of like-minded people makes it a less solitary experience.
And that’s exactly what these stories are about; the sense of belonging. Feeling that you belong is as important as the need for food, or sleep, or even breathing. It gives value to your life ; finding a supportive community, or having supportive friends, family or neighbors, and being able to be a supportive member of such a community yourself, helps you to find meaning in your life.
The main characters in these stories, all of Indian origin, and most of them migrants in America, struggle with this sense of belonging. The melancholic stories deal with love and loss, marriage and relationships, bonding and fitting in with others, receiving some attention and being valued. Whether you’re rich or poor, married or single, migrant or nonmigrant, sick or healthy, introvert or extrovert, male or female; we all crave belongingness. Jhumpa Lahiri’s emotional stories convey this need brilliantly and won’t leave you unaffected.
So if you push that ‘like’ button, it means much more to me than a position among the 9.179 reviews on this book. In fact, that position is totally irrelevant. What it really means to me is that you’re giving me a real sense of belonging to this community of readers, and a sense of being valued. And I’m immensely grateful to each one of you for that. Belonging is not competing for a ranking, but nevertheless for many people it’s a daily fight. And this book reminded me of the importance of belonging.

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐
Genre: Contemporary + Short Stories + Cultural

This is a short story collection of around nine stories. All these stories are about different themes, but most of them are about Indian characters living abroad and trying to cope with their new place in different ways. I’m not a big fan of anthologies because I feel a few stories will not get their due for sure, and each reader will prefer one tale over the others.

I think this is the debut book for the author, and I have to say she did a very commendable job handling the issues the characters were facing. Character development is not something that can be discussed here due to space constraints, but they were adequate for what they were.

I feel like I might’ve liked this book more if I had read it instead of listened to it. The narrator, despite having a pleasant voice, could not change her voice for the male characters, and this caused some confusion for me while listening. Maybe my experience would have been different. Because I believe the author's writing has the depth I typically seek, I am still interested in reading more books by her.

By and large I found this collection overrated. Which is not to say that I didn't find some of the stories fantastic, the title story for example, as well as the 2nd story in the book. And nothing was really bad here, but seldom did any of these stories strike me as anything as phenomenal as Ms. Lahiri's novel The Namesake.

The collection can be sorted into two main types of stories, those in the East, and those in the West. In both cases, what separates most of these stories from the tale of The Namesake is that they simply reproduce all the stereotypes and tropes of Indian-Bengali culture, whereas the novel actually took the time to explore the realities of such cultural norms. And maybe The Namesake could take that time BECAUSE it was a novel. But for a book to receive as much praise as Interpreter of Maladies, I was hoping for similar insights, merely compressed and distilled into short stories, but no such luck. Instead I found most of the stories repeating the same-old learning to love (or not love) the person with whom your marriage has been arranged (the American stories) and a couple commentaries about the persistence of the caste system (the Bengali stories). The characters do not challenge the culture (which I admit is a very Western expectation), but they didn't even add any nuances to the day-to-day of arranged marriage.

Lahiri is a good writer, as a few of these stories and her novel indicate. But high expectations can only hinder you with this collection. Read The Namesake instead, and watch it succeed despite the dominance of exposition over scene!

أول مجموعة قصصية للكاتبة جومبا لاهيري
أسلوب جميل وهادئ في الحكي عن مشاهد من حياة المغتربين الهنود
تجمع لاهيري التفاصيل الخاصة والعامة لترسم عوالم الشخصيات
في كل قصة صورة من العلاقات والهموم والمشاعر وضغوط الواقع
وتتناول خلال السرد مفردات الهجرة.. الاغتراب والحنين والثقافات المختلفة

اوایل نوع بیان کتاب من رو یاد کتاب بالاخره یه روزی قشنگ حرف می‌زنم و نوع نگارش فیروزه جزایری دوما می‌انداخت. با این تفاوت که این کتاب داستان‌هایی از زندگی شخصی نویسنده نیست، طنز ضعیف‌تری داشت و متوجه نمی‌شدم که خب که چی؟
تنها نقطه مثبت کتاب شاید تصویری باشه که از افراد هندی به خصوص اون‌هایی که مهاجرت کردن ارائه می‌داد. به اضافه اینکه نوع صحنه‌پردازی خیلی خوب بود و روند جالبی رو طی می‌کرد، گرچه پایان‌بندی هر داستان اصلا برای من خوشایند نبود.

جزو بهترین کتابایی بود که خوندم...نمیدونم شرایط روحی که داشتم تا این حد داستاناش رو واسم جذاب کرده بود یا به خودی خود جذاب بودند...کاش میشد اون بخش از حافظم که خوندن این کتاب‌رو ثبت کرده، پاک میکردم تا دوباره میتونستم اون حسی که خوندنش برای اولین بار داشت رو حس کنم=(

the Interpreter of *doffs cap* m'ladies

I can officially attest that Interpreter of Maladies more than merits the rave, rapturous reviews printed on the back–this is a stunning success from Jhumpa Lahiri.

In Lahiri’s rich, delicate, precise voice, the miniature stories in this collection tingle on the skin. They are moving, disquieting, and, in some cases, brutally devastating. How Lahiri manages to atomize these incredibly full, dense lives into short form, moving her characters around Boston and Bengal with the ease of a fish through waves—I don’t know. What I do know is that one does not so much read this collection as live in it.

Lahiri writes in language that is alive and unexpected. My initial guesses at what was coming continuously went through some rather severe adjustments. Lahiri was, I quickly learned, always just one step ahead. Yet, at the same time, each unexpected outcome somehow also felt inevitable: the characters in these stories seem to carve out their own patterns, impervious to the shape of the narrative. I never knew where each story was going, and that too felt like life.

There are nine disparate stories in this collection. Together, they form a complete, cohesive, emotionally legible whole. They are stories about loss, exile, and dispersion, and, in any such stories, they are also about love. In tragic, lyrical strains, Lahiri expresses the transient, exilic intimacy that emerges from shared uprootedness and promises to dull the habitual estrangement of everyday life. Against the background of a foreign, sometimes less than caring world, the characters in these stories stretch themselves to reach for one another and hope for understanding. But the attachments they form are not always easy or uncomplicated. This kind of diasporic intimacy is fragile, fraught, and haunted by dreams of home and homeland. It cannot retrieve the past, nor can it anesthetize against the pain of displacement, and in most cases, it cannot last forever. Yet, as Lahiri shows us, the transient, imperfect quality of these pockets of intimacy does not diminish the power of the characters’ encounters and collisions with one another: in the intricacy that transforms stories into histories, we are, in some impossible-to-measure way, always already intertwined.

Perhaps that is why “When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine,” “Mrs. Sen’s,” and “The Third and Final Continent” are the stories I return to the most. They are stories about the people who pass through our lives like a vision, but nevertheless leave indelible traces. People whose presence makes it easier to not only endure but inhabit our experiences of exile. Each story trails off into afterimages of a closeness that can no longer exist, an intimacy that was always already forfeit—and each ending stole my breath.

I loved Interpreter of Maladies, and I am convinced that an encounter with one of these stories will not leave you unchanged.

Most of the short stories are characterized by recurring themes of Indians trying to cope with an alien way of life in America and the subtle identity crisis triggered in one by a life away from one's homeland. Barring a few vivid descriptions of various cultural idiosyncrasies, there is nothing striking about any of the stories. Neither do the stories achieve any emotional resonance of sorts nor is there any strong overarching message one can perceive from a peremptory reading of the collection. A distinctly lacklustre style of writing doesn't help the reader tide over lack of interest either. I only felt some semblance of a connection with the stories of Mr Pirzada, Bibi Haldar and The Third and Final Continent. Rest are completely forgettable.

In a few years he will graduate and pave his way, alone and unprotected. But I remind myself that he has a father who is still living, a mother who is happy and strong. Whenever he is discouraged, I tell him that if I can survive on three continents, then there is no obstacle he can not conquer. While the astronauts, heroes forever, spent mere hours on the moon, I have remained in this new world for nearly thirty years. I know that my achievement is quite ordinary. I am not the only man to seek his fortune far from home, and certainly I am not the first. Still, 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. As ordinary as it all appears, there are times when it is beyond my imagination.

خیلی کتاب خوبی بود.
1. به نظرم مهم ترین دغدغه نویسنده در این مجموعه داستان "خانواده" است . خانواده برای انسان شرقی بسیار با اهمیت هست و در برخورد فرهنگ غربی و شرقی مهم ترین تفاوتی که خیلی بارز میشه همین تلقی های متفاوت از خانوده س. محکم میتونم بگم در همه داستانها خانواده یک بنیان مقدس داره که هندی های ساکن آمریکا سعی میکنن با همون تعریف شرقی حفظش کنن.
2. داستان نویسی زنانه را باید با همین جزئیات فراوان و پیرنگ های ساده و نسبتا سرراست و بی پیرایه و تقریبا شل و ول پذیرفت. ولی خیلی وقت ها مخاطبان عام هم اصلا به دنبال حوادث و وقایع عجیب غریب و معماگونه نیستند. همین حس عاطفی و روایت سرراست و جزئی نگر درگیرشون میکنه.
3. مثل خیلی جوایز غربی که به شرقی ها داده میشه جایزه پولیتزر هم برای خانم لاهیری حاشیه داشته و به مذاق خیلی از هندی ها خوش نیومده که در متن سخنرانی در پایان کتاب بهش اشاره میشه. من با این که از کتاب خوشم اومد میخوام اینجا طرف ناراضی ها را بگیرم. اگر مردم و نویسندگان هندی به این کتاب نقد داشته باشند حتما ضعف داره. در ژاپن خیلی ها به موراکامی نقد دارند ولی کسی صدای اونها را نشنیده. نویسنده های مهاجر را به هیچ عنوان نباید نماینده ادبیات اون کشور دونست.

جومپا لاهیری رو از همشهری داستان شناختم. این کتاب نُه داستان کوتاهه که به زندگی مهاجران هندی در آمریکا می پردازه. کمتر مجموعه داستان کوتاهی میتونست اینقدر منو به وجد بیاره. داستان ها به حدی سرشار از احساس و واقعی اند که تمام مدت لبخند رو لب‌هام بود.
از جومپا لاهیری بخونید که قطعاً پشیمونتون نمیکنه