Jhumpa Lahiri’s Unaccustomed Earth is by far her best piece of writing since Interpreter of Maladies. Frankly, The Namesake left me with a void. As a second generation American of Bengali descent, I frankly did not relate with many of the characters in the novel. The Namesake is about Gogol Ganguli and his family. Gogol has a huge ambivalence about his identity as a Bengali-American. The concept of the novel was great, but the development of the individual characters left me wanting more.

In Unaccustomed Earth, Lahiri was able to accomplish what I felt she hadn’t in The Namesake. The characters were realistic, they actually reminded me of people I know. The title is appropriate since Lahiri manages to create a conglomerate of earthy characters who are imaginably real and imperfect. The reader can empathize with their situations. This set of short stories reminded me of her Pulitzer Prize winning book, but the stories are longer and weave in and out of different time periods, characters and places.

Lahiri’s imagery is amazing. Very few writers have this talent. She seduces the reader and gets them to use their minds and visualize what the characters look and act like. Most likely this book won’t be made into a Hollywood film, if it does, let’s just hope that Kal Penn isn’t in it.