There is good literature and good reading.
Sometimes, good, even great, literature does not equal everyone's taste in good reading. I have trouble with some Joyce Carol Oates and E. L. Doctorow. But, give me Saul Bellow or Joan Didion -- well, I find them elucidating, illuminated and entertaining.
Jhumpa Lahiri falls in that category as well and for the same reason.Her characters are compelling, her settings are spot on, her plots are familiar even when they feature people in far different circumstances than the reader.
You really see this in short stories where many different characters come at you, story to story. Like Alice Munro or Pam Houston, Lahiri is a master of the compact.
Unaccustomed Earth, Lahiri's 2008 collection, brings the reader into the lives of young Bengalis in the United States. Lahiri was once one of them, although she was born in London and came here at only 2-years-old. She describes herself as "a daughter of parents who spoke accented English."
The young couples and individuals in the stories are all well-educated, smart and, to one extent or another, successful. But, each has a different outlook, a different set of circumstances.
The relationships between the accented-English spearkers and their more fluent adult or nearly adult children afre often emphasized. In the title story, a widowed fther visits his daughter and grandchild with a secret.
Relationships with Americans are portrayed in the stories Hell-Heaven, Nobody's Business and A Choice of Accommodations." Siblings dominate "Only Goodness." The stories in Part 2 are linked.
Lahiri expertly weaves the settings into her fascinating plots and her characters into each others' lives.
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