Rating: 
Summary: Great voice, excellent perspective
Review: Interpreter of Maladies is quite an impressive first book.I really enjoyed the different voices Lahiri expresses through different characters in her different stories. It brought to life the struggle faced by many Indian-Americans who live in America, yet maintain strong ties to India and its traditions. The characters were presented so honestly that I felt like I was talking with them rather than reading about them, which is difficult to do in a short story. It wasn't a book that changed my life, but it did give me a new insight into a ure rarely written about. An easy, pleasant read with rewards.
Rating:
Summary: Nostalgic, Romantic and Great Prose
Review: When I first received a copy from my brother, who sent it to me from Amazon, I was not sure what this was about. Many Indian authors who live in the US and write about lives of Indians in the US had disappointed me earlier, especially a book by much coveted Mrs. Bharati Mukherjee. When I started reading the book, I was completely taken by surprise, by the nostalgic undertones, the romanticism of the immigrants towards their long lost home, and relations., and more. The first story did not strike me that much, where a couple's relationship goes through crescendo of a kind I am not familiar with but when that culminated in crisis I am more familiar with, I felt the strength in the story telling. However, the most moving stories for me, are "Mr. Pirzada came to dine", which portray's a tormented soul who is in the middle of a war, and watching the war on TV, happening in his homeland, and his family is stuck back there, "Mrs. Sen", the loneliness of a housewife of an Indian person who came to US to work at a University, and the last story, which trouched me the most. Since then, I have gifted copies of this book to many relatives and friends. When I visited India this April, I took a copy for one of my Aunt, and just after I reached there, before presenting my Aunt with the gift, I read in the local newspaper that Jhumpa Lahiri won the Pulitzer award for this book. This of course underscored the importance of the book in the minds of people who were yet to read at that time. For people like me, my brother, my cousin, and all, who read it not so long ago, we still have the vivid memory of the great feeling and impact it has left on us.
Rating: 
Summary: Delightful stories
Review: Jhumpa Lahiri writes well, with a great economy of words, in a simple and direct manner. In a few pages, she is able to paint a few complete characters. Although she has a good knowledge of Calcutta and India for one who was brought up and lived all her life away from India, one or two things about India are not correct. The language of Orissa in not `Orissi' (Interpreter of Maladies) but `Oriya'---Orissi is a dance form of Orissa. It is `Mandeville Gardens' not `Mandeville Road' in Calcutta (This Blessed House).
Rating:
Summary: Salute to a Pulitzer debutante
Review: Firstly, it is hats off to a debutante. 9 Short stories written with so much essence and value. The book deals with the lives of human beings at differant stages. During and after the partition of India, first generation indian americans..... and about relationships. There is so much truth to each story. It is written in such a way it feels that the author was a witness to all that was... Though some stories relate to Indian lifestyles there are some which involves human relationships.. like that of shoba and shukumar..... the trauma they go through and the reason for their marriage falling apart is because of lack of proper support - could be a psychiatric support or family.. In the case of Mrs Das... Lahiri shows us the dual sides of a persons life.... Miranda.... is definitely so common in todays world... Reality of this world is what the book has dealt with mostly... and real eye opener in many ways... A treasure in my library
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful attempt
Review: I picked up Interpreter of Maladies by chance while searching for another book I had in mind. The title drew me, and then, as I randomly opened the pages and browsed, the simplicity and ease with which she wrote further entrapped me. It is strange that this book should be so successful, because its secrets are never revealed, its audience is made to twist into a racially structured mindset, and the stories in and of themselves are unremarkable. And yet by the time you have finished reading you find yourself choosing your favorite narratives, smiling over the direct and simple extended metaphors, appreciating the tightness of the language in such confined plots. It does not dazzle, it seeps into you. She does tend to state the obvious, her vehicles for realization are often the same contrast in different settings, and with a little more work there could have been more depth. It lacks the universal inferences with which one hopes to become involved... It is not neccessary to be asian in order to understand these stories, but I would imagine much of the drollery of observation is lost if you are not (the plastic on the lampshades, the already poured cereal, the lament of "back home"). Worth a read, because unlike other authors, Lahiri does not claim ethnicity or shun it, she succeeds in making it just another dimension of life. We should learn to do the same.
Rating:
Summary: amazing stories
Review: This is far and away one of the best collections of short stories ever written. I can't stop rereading "When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dinner." "Sexy," and "A Temporary Matter" were also outstanding. Her character portraits are amazing. The stories left me begging for more. I love her use of history in the stories. Really, really great. I hope Jhumpa Lahiri writes another books soon.
Rating: 
Summary: Polished and professional
Review: I thought there was a lot to learn from Ms lahiri's book. Firstly - she completely resists the tendency to overwrite or overstate. Second - she does not attempt anything she can't complete in a single story. She is adept at pacing each one, filling the contained space of "story" in the traditional sense without overfilling. The smallness of character's lives or of the revelations that they experience in each story make her work, in content, several steps removed from Chekhov or Joyce - but perfectly well suited to contemporary readers. Her stories are modern rather than magical. I think what a writer can learn from her is how to write a story as an exercise - on any theme of gripping personal interest, but within the lines of what makes a 5000 word story publishable in various magazines. For me it was hard to relate to some of the perspectives she chose - I would have been more interested in writing from the perspective of the wife who "looks like Madhuri Dixit" in "Sexy" - more interested in the husband's friends than in Twinkle, more interested, again, in Mr. Kapasi's wife (although that story is really excellent). But this is all arbitrary - everyone writes from the point of view that interests them the most, and that's what Ms lahiri did, and so smoothly too.
Rating: 
Summary: As short in thought as it is in length
Review: How this sub-par piece of work won a Pulitzer is beyond me. If an award was given for these dull short stories, I guess I should get my acceptance speech ready for next year's Pulitzers after I win one for this review. No personality in this bland collection and nothing much about it to recommend.
Rating:
Summary: Evocative, subtle, post-post modern;
Review: VERY BENGALI VERY AMERICAN Simple lives, simple stories, that's life all about. Only a good author knows how to narrate the obvious, without adding OHenry-esque melodrama, but bringing out the nuances of mundane lives. Lahiri excels in that. The Third and Last Continent is poignant and rich. So is the first one The Temporary Matter.
Rating:
Summary: Unique and extraordinary stories
Review: It is difficult even for a well-established writer to be the Pulitzer Prize winner for Fiction! When a new writer grabs the prize with his or her first collection of stories, it is important to read the book rather than go by the label! I was impressed by the unique and extraordinary nature of Ms Jhumpa Lahiri's short stories. She is a writer of extraordinary elegance. She portrays the pains of being a foreigner in another country by narrating her stories objectively without dwelling too much on emotions. Ms Lahiri provides valuable insights into marginal characters who travel between two worlds. Lahiri's "Interpreter of Maladies" is also a great contribution to new and emerging diasporic literature in which lives of people who are living away from their home and their displacement, rootlessness, and the ambivalence is portrayed. In these stories Ms Lahiri does more than that. Her stories provide powerful insights into life, love, relationships moreover the pains of living away from home. The stories are unique and extraordinary.
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