Rating: 
Summary: Hmmm.
Review: I'm a native-born American citizen with Indian (immigrant) parents, and I've rarely felt particularly "Indian", as my parents raised me without telling me much about my cultural heritage. The little they did tell me about Indian culture regarded how silly they thought some of its customs were, such as arranged marriage and religious fasting.I found this book incredibly interesting. I've read very little fiction about India, so I don't know how these stories compare to the rest of what's out there, but I loved every one of them. They gave me an immense amount of respect for my heritage, from its broad ideals to its intricate details. They also provided me with a viewpoint that I could easily relate to, since most of the main characters were Americans or Indians who had spent all or much of their life in America. In particular, I was fascinated by the way the author depicts things that are normally seen by Western culture as backwards and oppressive. For instance, her portrayal of arranged marriage is interesting because it's not presented as something inferior to the American model of courtship and love, but as an alternative. I found that many of the stories in this book challenge the Western conceptions of "soulmates" and "finding the perfect match" by suggesting that an individual can love almost anyone romantically and unconditionally and can happily live with them for the rest of their days, as long as they are willing to put effort into the relationship and treat the other person with respect and understanding. Lahiri's stories are full of cultural juxtapositions that are catalysts for such ruminations, although they're often very subtle (I'm sure I missed a ton of them) so it's usually up to the reader to make the connections. Which I don't have a problem with, because it means I can read her stories over and over and keep finding new things in them. Unlike many other short stories I've encountered, most of the stories in this book didn't have some kind of "surprise plot twist". In fact, most short stories I've read are more like full-length novels compressed into 20 or 30 pages: they have an exposition, rising action, climax, resolution, and a lot of action takes place in them. Lahiri's stories aren't like this at all; they're more like portraits that change over time. I mean, a single day in anyone's life is a story, and a very interesting one: not because all kinds of events and plot twists happen, but because of everything else. Lahiri focuses on everything else. A still-frame portrait takes a single, uneventful instant in someone's life and makes it beautiful. Similarly, Lahiri's short stories take a few relatively uneventful days, weeks, or months in an ordinary person's life and make them seem extraordinary. Without being trite, contrived, or corny. I don't know how she accomplishes this, but I'm envious.
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Summary: I can't wait to read what Lahiri writes next!
Review: Richly woven tales of poignantly human characters.
Rating:
Summary: Can't Wait for her Next
Review: In unique prose and great delivery, this new author has run all over the established literary world with her melding of Indian with American cultures and teaches us about Americans of the Indian/American dichotomoy and its unique application to the northeastern world which past literature usually described as the playground for the Boston Brahman and their like. This author is as much the future or American literature as are the immigrants the future of American society. Can't wait for her next.
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Summary: Excellent Book!!!
Review: This is a great book for everyone. It details various life experiences that have deeper meanings. She writes with great subtlety that truly makes you feel like the interpreter of the maladies.
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Summary: touched home
Review: like lahiri, i am a second generation bengali, born in the uk and brought up in new york. this is what sparked my interest in the book, but reading the first story i found that it was much more than i expected... lahiri has obviously lived life very much awake, her details of the day to day lives of immigrants/second generationers were eerily accurate and surprisingly honest. she wrote with an observers eye, but still managed to be very intimate. you definitely felt like you knew the characters well, and were sad to see them go so quickly. as someone from a very similar background, i feel like many of my own feelings have been vaildated, and i still can't believe how true these stories ring - im feel sure that everyone will be able to relate
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Summary: It MADE me read it...
Review: At first, I wasn't sure I would like the stories - I feared that they were going to be, like too much modern literature, a category of broken people hurting one another and finding no real resolution. But then I started reading the book. Even though I had other things I needed to be doing, I kept picking it back up. I had finished every story by the end of the day. The stories are luminous. They are each like a painting or a stage set - everything is there, everything is self-contained. You have a window into others' lives. Another reason I enjoyed the book was the glimpses into another culture (I am assuming that because Lahiri is Bengali, her cultural references are correct). I like a book that allows me to see life through others' eyes. The stories *are* mostly sad, but it is more a melancholy than a depressive sadness. My favorites were the second story, where the young girl learned of the harm that human-imposed borders can wreak on relationships, and the last story (The Third and Final Continent), where a young man learns to live in the U.S., and later how to love and live with his almost-unknown bride. The stories are very psychological, very inner-directed. If you are a person who needs to see a lot of action going on, or who cares less about character than plot, this may not be the book for you. But I enjoyed it immensely, and could not put it down.
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Summary: Touching and insightful
Review: Now this is powerful collection of stories. I would read a story a day and be absorbed into the plot for the rest of the time. Ms. Lahiri definitely has earned her right for the Pulitzer prize. Her characters are so real and human that it is difficult to accept that these stories are in fact fiction.
Rating: 
Summary: It Won A What?
Review: This is the kind of writing that should win only rejection letters from editors. Blah blah blah. It's all "tell" not "show." Anyone can tell a story -- the challenge is to attempt to dramatize it. This tendency -- as in Nathan Englander -- to merely tell the story is perhaps due to the reading public's desire (and hence publishers') for biographies. Whatever the cause of its being actually published, without its so-called exotic flavor, this book would to this date only be available on Ms Lahiri's hard drive.
Rating: 
Summary: comatose
Review: My apologies to those that found this novel, a piece of art. Having roots in the sub-continent myself this book caught my attention almost immediatly. After finishing it in one stretch over the weekend I fail to find anything inspiring or particularily commendable about this book.
In short, it is simply a series of monotonous accounts of various immigrants' dull and discontented lives in America that seem to drift aimlessly into a null........is the author telling us that immigrants in America though second generation are never at ease with their surroundings?
Rating: 
Summary: Short story heaven
Review: I'm about to embark on my second reading of this collection of stories, in part to recapture some of the magic I experienced when I first read it over a year ago. Jhumpa Lahiri's stories are engaging, interesting, and provide a solid window into the world of foreigners living in America. My only (very minor) complaint is that at times Lahiri's prose is almost too conscious of itself...it sometimes reads like she has just polished each piece after a graduate writing workshop. Nevertheless, this should not hold you back from picking this one up.
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