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The Lowland
Goodreads Choice Award
Nominee for Best Fiction (2013)Epic in its canvas and intimate in its portrayal of lives undone and forged anew, The Lowland is a deeply felt novel of family ties that entangle and fray in ways unforeseen and unrevealed, of ties that ineluctably define who we are
From Subhash's earliest memories, at every point, his brother was there. In the suburban streets of Calcutta where they wandered before dusk and in the hyacinth-strewn ponds where they played for hours on end, Udayan was always in his older brother's sight. So close in age, they were inseparable in childhood and yet, as the years pass - as U.S tanks roll into Vietnam and riots sweep across India - their brotherly bond can do nothing to forestall the tragedy that will upend their lives.
Udayan - charismatic and impulsive - finds himself drawn to the Naxalite movement, a rebellion waged to eradicate inequity and poverty. He will give everything, risk all, for what he believes, and in doing so will transform the futures of those dearest to him: his newly married, pregnant wife, his brother and their parents. For all of them, the repercussions of his actions will reverberate across continents and seep through the generations that follow.
Epic in its canvas and intimate in its portrayal of lives undone and forged anew, The Lowland is a deeply felt novel of family ties that entangle and fray in ways unforeseen and unrevealed, of ties that ineluctably define who we are. With all the hallmarks of Jhumpa Lahiri's achingly poignant, exquisitely empathetic story-telling, this is her most devastating work of fiction to date.
From Subhash's earliest memories, at every point, his brother was there. In the suburban streets of Calcutta where they wandered before dusk and in the hyacinth-strewn ponds where they played for hours on end, Udayan was always in his older brother's sight. So close in age, they were inseparable in childhood and yet, as the years pass - as U.S tanks roll into Vietnam and riots sweep across India - their brotherly bond can do nothing to forestall the tragedy that will upend their lives.
Udayan - charismatic and impulsive - finds himself drawn to the Naxalite movement, a rebellion waged to eradicate inequity and poverty. He will give everything, risk all, for what he believes, and in doing so will transform the futures of those dearest to him: his newly married, pregnant wife, his brother and their parents. For all of them, the repercussions of his actions will reverberate across continents and seep through the generations that follow.
Epic in its canvas and intimate in its portrayal of lives undone and forged anew, The Lowland is a deeply felt novel of family ties that entangle and fray in ways unforeseen and unrevealed, of ties that ineluctably define who we are. With all the hallmarks of Jhumpa Lahiri's achingly poignant, exquisitely empathetic story-telling, this is her most devastating work of fiction to date.
340 pages, Hardcover
First published September 24, 2013
About the author
Jhumpa Lahiri
89 books13.8k followersNilanjana Sudeshna "Jhumpa" Lahiri was born in London and brought up in South Kingstown, Rhode Island. Brought up in America by a mother who wanted to raise her children to be Indian, she learned about her Bengali heritage from an early age.
Lahiri graduated from South Kingstown High School and later received her B.A. in English literature from Barnard College in 1989. She then received multiple degrees from Boston University: an M.A. in English, an M.A. in Creative Writing, an M.A. in Comparative Literature and a Ph.D. in Renaissance Studies. She took up a fellowship at Provincetown's Fine Arts Work Center, which lasted for the next two years (1997-1998).
In 2001, she married Alberto Vourvoulias-Bush, a journalist who was then Deputy Editor of TIME Latin America Lahiri currently lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two children. She has been a Vice President of the PEN American Center since 2005.
Lahiri taught creative writing at Boston University and the Rhode Island School of Design. Much of her short fiction concerns the lives of Indian-Americans, particularly Bengalis.
She received the following awards, among others:
1999 - PEN/Hemingway Award (Best Fiction Debut of the Year) for Interpreter of Maladies;
2000 - The New Yorker's Best Debut of the Year for Interpreter of Maladies;
2000 - Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her debut Interpreter of Maladies
Lahiri graduated from South Kingstown High School and later received her B.A. in English literature from Barnard College in 1989. She then received multiple degrees from Boston University: an M.A. in English, an M.A. in Creative Writing, an M.A. in Comparative Literature and a Ph.D. in Renaissance Studies. She took up a fellowship at Provincetown's Fine Arts Work Center, which lasted for the next two years (1997-1998).
In 2001, she married Alberto Vourvoulias-Bush, a journalist who was then Deputy Editor of TIME Latin America Lahiri currently lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two children. She has been a Vice President of the PEN American Center since 2005.
Lahiri taught creative writing at Boston University and the Rhode Island School of Design. Much of her short fiction concerns the lives of Indian-Americans, particularly Bengalis.
She received the following awards, among others:
1999 - PEN/Hemingway Award (Best Fiction Debut of the Year) for Interpreter of Maladies;
2000 - The New Yorker's Best Debut of the Year for Interpreter of Maladies;
2000 - Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her debut Interpreter of Maladies
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October 13, 2013
Very close to a 3. Downgraded to a 2 because Lahiri can do SO much better.
This book was just too chilly for me. Years, decades, generations pass, but people don't grow, change or express themselves- they just keep bitterness, love, sadness, guilt equally bottled up, and indulge in quiet renunciation (Subhash) or witchy selfishness (Gauri). (I've never seen any of the stereotypically bleak Scandinavian films (Bergman et al.) but I imagine that they would feel like this book does).
Lahiri is undoubtedly talented - I loved the Namesake, and thought Unaccustomed Earth was great. But this book seems like a fascinating idea grown stiff in the telling.
I'm always interested when a writer takes on the "bad mother" (not the dominating or disapproving mother, which are common enough, but the mother who doesn't instantly and instinctively put motherhood and her children first above all things), because she is such a charged figure in our current culture. But Lahiri's take ends up being not particularly nuanced or interesting - she's rather punishing and uncompromising with Gauri, and that story is as old as the hills.
Skippable.
This book was just too chilly for me. Years, decades, generations pass, but people don't grow, change or express themselves- they just keep bitterness, love, sadness, guilt equally bottled up, and indulge in quiet renunciation (Subhash) or witchy selfishness (Gauri). (I've never seen any of the stereotypically bleak Scandinavian films (Bergman et al.) but I imagine that they would feel like this book does).
Lahiri is undoubtedly talented - I loved the Namesake, and thought Unaccustomed Earth was great. But this book seems like a fascinating idea grown stiff in the telling.
I'm always interested when a writer takes on the "bad mother" (not the dominating or disapproving mother, which are common enough, but the mother who doesn't instantly and instinctively put motherhood and her children first above all things), because she is such a charged figure in our current culture. But Lahiri's take ends up being not particularly nuanced or interesting - she's rather punishing and uncompromising with Gauri, and that story is as old as the hills.
Skippable.
April 23, 2015
"It was as if Udayan were there, speaking to him, teasing him. He felt their loyalty to one another, their affection, stretched halfway across the world. Stretched perhaps to the breaking point by all that now stood between them, but at the same time refusing to break."
You don't have to be in a certain place, at a certain time to be able to catch the faint thrum of the lifeblood coursing through the pages of this book, live the heartbreak of its characters, to develop a sense of solidarity with their loss and desperation, to gaze at the spectacle of their unravelling fates across continents. But it will help if you have lived, at some point in time, in a city christened Calcutta by the British and rechristened Kolkata (the pure Bengali name) centuries later by a government intent on erasing telling signs of a nation's unfortunate colonial past. It will help if you have ever felt rudderless, adrift in a sea of anonymous human faces, unable to come to terms with a painful event, its aftermath too profound and terrible for you to grasp at once. It will help if you are carrying on with a half-life thousands of miles away from the land of your birth, toeing the line of divide between two distinct yet similar worlds.
I have lived near Tollygunge all my life - a sort of an overlapping region between the place where I spent the earliest years of my childhood and the place where I grew into a young woman. Every time I arrive at the beginning of Tollygunge Circular Road from another portion of the city, I know with a comforting certainty that I am close to home, close to the assurance of rest and a meal, close to where my loved ones await my return as yet another day reaches its inevitable end. And Ms Lahiri has brought my humble, modest, familiar Tollygunge to life. Reminded me that my decrepit and majestic city has been witness to the rise and decline of too many political regimes, to the bloodletting during senseless communal riots and a terrible famine manufactured by a colonial administration too busy fighting a world war. That my city has been living for centuries before I was born, like a mythical, gargantuan beast and that it would continue to throb with life and activity years after I am gone. How silly is it that in the eagerness to match steps with the developed world, to achieve set targets, we forget the blood-soaked, tear-streaked history of the country we live in, that we are inextricably bound to the political upheavals which serve as foundation stones to our present state of equanimity, to the sheer tragedy and violence of turbulent times.
Neither am I Jhumpa Lahiri's biggest fan nor her harshest critic. My reaction to her writing has been very subdued so far. In addition, Ms Lahiri never seems to accomplish anything else other than rehashing the same old themes of nostalgia, the very cliched search for identity and the predictable rigmarole in novels recounting the immigrant experience. But with The Lowland, she has achieved something monumental, managed to rekindle an extinguished flame within me. Perhaps her achievement lies in an accurate enactment of that unmistakable sensation of being anchored to a place and a way of life, of being pulled towards a powerful centre. Whatever the case maybe, my past resentment about her 'undeserved' Pulitzer win is now gone as if it never was.
It's like she has reached out to me from across the shores of the Pacific, held my hand and gently propelled me towards a life-like portrait of Calcutta, my Kolkata, the maddening, mystifying, glorious and ugly city of my birth which will remain as beloved to me by any other name, towards the people who inhabit its upscale townships and dingy shanties, towards the unknown stories of hardship and triumph which breathe life into this jungle of steel, brick and mortar, towards the struggles of an ill-fated generation now forgotten in the mad dash for globalization, towards a culture which has molded me into what I am today. It felt like looking into a mirror after a prolonged gap and spotting something hitherto undetected in that reflection. It felt like remembering something important.
I won't go into the subject of Udayan's misguided idealism and the havoc it wreaked in the lives of his loved ones. I won't elaborate on how Subhash ended up living a proxy life, responsibly stepping up to assume all the roles designated for his brother. I will not retrace Gauri's path to self-discovery and emancipation from the assigned identities of bereaved widow, dutiful daughter-in-law, mere wife and mother. And I certainly will not defend or condemn her refusal to let her life be defined by the flawed choices of the man she loved.
Instead I would only leave you with a polite request to place your faith in the Booker committee's judgement and read this. Regardless of where you may have grown up - Rhode Island or Tollygunge - irrespective of whichever movement has left its indelible mark on the socio-political landscape of your nation - SDS or Naxalite agitation - Ms Lahiri will take you on a trip down memory lane, back to your roots, to the values that reside at your core and hold you together, to the people you have left behind somewhere in this long, befuddling journey of life but cannot ever forget. And she may remind you of who you used to be once and what you are now.
May 24, 2013
Wow. Jhumpa Lahiri's THE LOWLAND is a big novel with the power of her best short stories.
It follows the life of Subhash Mitra as he grows up in Calcutta and then moves to America--typical fare for Lahiri, but with much broader scope and even cleaner, crisper writing than the Pulitzer Prize winner has shown in the past.
With a sweeping, addictive plot, THE LOWLAND still peels naked the identities brother, lover, father, and mother, often with just a small, simple gesture. It challenges the politics of nationality with both pathetic desperation and revolutionary zeal. It makes you want and hope and despair with devastating stories of passion and indifference.
I won't write much about the plot because publication's still so far off, plus: spoilers. But when you read it we need to talk: I could write essays on the relationship between the two brother or the sensory magic Lahiri effortlessly conjures in the most simple domestic chores.
But simply put: Jhumpa Lahiri might be my favorite living writer, and this is definitely my favorite of her books.
It follows the life of Subhash Mitra as he grows up in Calcutta and then moves to America--typical fare for Lahiri, but with much broader scope and even cleaner, crisper writing than the Pulitzer Prize winner has shown in the past.
With a sweeping, addictive plot, THE LOWLAND still peels naked the identities brother, lover, father, and mother, often with just a small, simple gesture. It challenges the politics of nationality with both pathetic desperation and revolutionary zeal. It makes you want and hope and despair with devastating stories of passion and indifference.
I won't write much about the plot because publication's still so far off, plus: spoilers. But when you read it we need to talk: I could write essays on the relationship between the two brother or the sensory magic Lahiri effortlessly conjures in the most simple domestic chores.
But simply put: Jhumpa Lahiri might be my favorite living writer, and this is definitely my favorite of her books.
March 21, 2014
Twilight’s Children
He had found the letter under his brother’s bed.
He had not minded the dust that lit up the damp light of the room. He had read it immediately. But now that he was back in his room, he took it out again, wanting to read it one more time, as always.
He remembered all the letters he used to receive from India and of how he could hear his Udayan’s childhood voice as he read it, even when the voice was long changed. In this letter he could not.
This time he picked up from the third page of the letter, glancing at the parts that did not make sense to him.
What defines identity once you are away from your center? What defines the center when you are away from our identity?
He wondered why Udayan would take the trouble to write all this when it must have been such a struggle to write at all. With that hand of his… Is it because he wanted to take comfort in talking with me? Or does he just write whatever comes to mind, arrange them in a semblance of order and mail them across the oceans? He looked back at the page.
Is it anger in the obvious betterment seen all around you? Is it shame that you were never really part of it? That you were not part of building it? And instead of building one you have just taken the easier path? Is it pride, perhaps, in your independence? Is it the blustering of the intolerable journalist when he talks about the better ‘systems’? Is it just a sense of loss of all that is left behind?
He skipped the last few lines and then skipped to the next page. Udayan’s handwriting always used to deteriorate towards the end of a page and now it was almost unreadable. ‘Not that I am missing much,’ he said to himself.
Wherein lies the center of the modern man’s existence?
Is it in an imaginary village consisting of all that mattered to him as he was growing up - do they ever break that circle? Or is it constantly expanded as you grow? Or is it constantly redefined?
If you don’t have the less developed multitudes (relatives like me) to look upon you from that left-behind circle, will any achievement truly matter in life? Can your center, your point of reference and your identity, only be defined from a transpositional view from below? Or is It from a patriarchal view from above that leaves you smarting?
He was not sure why Udayan had taken to writing to him as if the roles were reversed - as if he was the one who had never set foot beyond his home city and as if Udayan was the one who had roamed the world and thought about a home that had been left behind with such ease. Of course, Udayan wouldn’t have been able to leave behind anything. He had been able to. ‘With ease,’ he repeated doubtfully.
He had skipped ahead again without noticing it but decided to carry on. He knew he would be reading it over later. Again.
What of the constant sense that assaults you of not being part of the ‘real’ world - of the world you inhabit - the ones outside your country, your center being somehow artificial? Is it this artificiality that gives you wings? Soaring in a flight of fancy to heights you wouldn’t have dreamed of back where the real things are?
It is not as if he didn’t know that this was probably Udayan’s way of teasing him into coming back home. And it is not as if he didn’t know why it was never posted. He started skipping across the letter faster, eager to reach where he was addressed directly. Eager to see if could recapture the childhood voice when he read his brother addressing him directly instead of talking platitudes. He uttered a faint hum as he skipped across increasingly badly scribbled lines.
Is it a requirement to step outside the circle to be able to step outside it?
…
How do you view the real world then? Are they the dream now that you are living the dream?
…
Can you sleep knowing that the dream is never to be dreamt?
…
Why wouldn’t you try to dream up some solutions as well then? Why wouldn’t you start believing that your newfound wings would work in that ‘real’ world too? Why wouldn’t you even consider flying back?
…
Why wouldn’t you attempt to solve all the problems?
Even if you never attempt it, you know that with these wings of yours, any problem is an easy one, especially those - the ones in that ‘real’ world. The shadow world of reality.
He felt a faint irritation with his brother now. What right did he have to lecture? What had he done except read a bunch of books and preach around? Then he checked himself. Udayan had always stopped teasing whenever he got angry. He used to always know why.
It is not necessary, of course, that the circle of identity had to be a country or a village or a society or family - stepping outside your circle, outside our reality gives you wings and solutions - but the solutions and the wings are never to be allowed back in - you may step back in but you step back in as yourself, without the fancy stuff. And then you have to forget the dream. You can only inhabit the twilight or the sunrise. Never both.
Ah, he remembered, now is when he talks about the book he had asked me to send to Anita. Udayan had ended up reading it first. Mostly because one of the main characters in the book shared his name. He tried to recollect the little he had read of the book before wrapping it. He knew that much of Udayan’s ramblings in this letter might have come from the book.
After all, there were some parallels. It was the eternal afterlife of the exile that Jhumpa Lahiri was always expert at dissecting. ‘Maybe it was all a build up towards telling me why I should read it too,’ he mused, ‘maybe he was not taunting me at all’. Or maybe he felt the book could do that job much better.
There are some books which once read you have a compulsion to make others read - as if the enjoyment is not complete until it is shared. Until you can see the expression of amazement in the other’s face when they have read too - your enjoyment growing in the realization of theirs.
This book is not like that - it is a quiet pleasure to read but there is no expectation of pleasure from the sharing of it - there is no compulsion to talk about it - there is nothing much to talk about really. It is boring in its own way: a beautiful and boring stream that you saw on your way - you paused to see it but you don’t run home to get your wife to stare at it together.
I was excited to read it, to see how it would capture the times that we have lived through. Times that held so much meaning for us. But, it was not meant to be of the masses and the loudness of the massed struggle - just of the individuals and of the quietness of their desperations — it requires no knowledge of our complicated history or the nuances of our anger that ignited the streets. It was not even remotely concerned about all that…
He started searching for the book among the shelves. Then under the bed. His brother loved to sleep with a book and let it slide under his bed as one arm arced and drooped. There it was. Almost brand new. Only two pages bent to mark places to return to. He turned back to the letter.
We are Twilight’s Children, brother, the Midnight’s Children was still some way ahead of us - we are the ones without definition. We were born before the darkness set in, and the day too far off.
After reading The Namesake (the one that you had sent me years ago - ordering me to read it and that you wanted me to get a sense of your University student life), I searched for something new in this one… trying to find what excited the author, trying to get a glimpse into your life - the intimacy with the characters was there - that was expected, that was known; the reality of private lives was there - again known, again expected. What set this apart from the other one? Is it the suffering? But what is suffering? Where was it? I couldn’t see it? Is it necessary that your own anguish has to be less than that of a character’s for you to be able to feel empathy?
But, when I read about this one (in an editorial review), I half thought I could get you to read it... to understand me - another book from the same author. There seemed to be a symmetry to that. But it was not to be. It was not about Bengal, at least not the Bengal that I lived through… it was not to be.
I am told the author grew up in Rhode island - that intimacy is visible. Rhode island becomes more of a home to the reader than his own Bengal. Again, my purposes were not being served by the author.
He looked at the marked pages of the book again and noticed that both seemed to be underlined faintly on lines that described their city. The language was exquisite. Maybe the time away from his expected times and places put him off the book. Udayan was never one for relishing language. He always wanted meanings and words to speak loud and bold.
You had told that you would try to read this before sending it to me. If you managed to complete the book, you must have realized that the book is not very atypical of Lahiri. I am afraid she will find it hard to win another Booker until she breaks out of her own mould or a Booker Committee comes along that doesn’t take the trouble to have read the previous winners.
He smiled at his brother’s silly mistake and continued reading. But he found that he was skipping through the lines now, without reading much. Soon he had reached the end of the letter. It did not end with the usual wishes and he knew that it had not been finished. He quietly flipped back to the beginning again. He could hear the milkman cycling outside on his early morning rounds.
Their relationship had been stretched - stretched halfway across the world - refusing to break, no matter how much he tried.
He walked slowly to the window-sill and lit the candle he had placed here. He watched as the ashes settled nearby and turned away as the breeze started to carry them away.
July 26, 2013
I've been postponing writing a review of this book because I'm not sure what I can say that hasn't been already said by others in a more eloquent fashion. So I'll record here my lingering reaction, the feeling that has stayed with me after two months:
This book is haunting and haunted. A pair of linked tragedies disrupt forever the lives of three generations. Like in The Infatuations, by Javier Marias, several characters are unable to let go, though the response in Marias's characters is more rationalized, analyzed over and over, while in The Lowland it leaves the characters partially stunted, emotionally paralyzed and sort of vacant. Of course, the individual reactions vary, but there's this common empty room in their hearts that refuses to be filled. Lahiri drives this point home painfully and beautifully through actual vacated spaces: balconies, home offices, beds, chairs, etc. where the absent linger in spirit, forever haunting the ones who stayed. This is a powerful emotional read, and obviously a very sad one, though I could discern mostly hope in the final pages.
If you're looking for a grand, sweeping, but intimate novel that will find a spot in your heart and refuse to let go, don't miss this one.
This book is haunting and haunted. A pair of linked tragedies disrupt forever the lives of three generations. Like in The Infatuations, by Javier Marias, several characters are unable to let go, though the response in Marias's characters is more rationalized, analyzed over and over, while in The Lowland it leaves the characters partially stunted, emotionally paralyzed and sort of vacant. Of course, the individual reactions vary, but there's this common empty room in their hearts that refuses to be filled. Lahiri drives this point home painfully and beautifully through actual vacated spaces: balconies, home offices, beds, chairs, etc. where the absent linger in spirit, forever haunting the ones who stayed. This is a powerful emotional read, and obviously a very sad one, though I could discern mostly hope in the final pages.
If you're looking for a grand, sweeping, but intimate novel that will find a spot in your heart and refuse to let go, don't miss this one.
September 21, 2013
Two brothers, born in India before partition, come of political age in the 1960s. One brother becomes politically active, the other doesn’t, and their lives unfold in completely disparate ways. Tragedy is inevitable, and families struggle to readjust and heal. Some adjust better than others.
The word ‘Potentially’ should have preceded the publisher’s blurb of “Suspenseful, sweeping, piercingly intimate”, because the opportunities to create that kind of story were squandered. There was a rich substrate to mine: the struggles of the Bengali communist party, the reconciliation of politics with the realities of everyday family life, immigration and integration, grief and its effects, and the evolution of people as they grow from youth to middle age to their winters. None of these were explored; they were merely described.
The book spans over fifty years of the adults’ lives, yet fails to recognise that people change as they age. We are not the same in late middle age as we were in early adulthood. We mature, we acquire wisdom (of varying degrees, it’s true, some acquire a lot more than others), we gain insight into complex matters. This is the byproduct of enduring, surviving, aging. But Lahiri’s characters don’t evolve, so they don’t seem real; they remain static, dooming the reader to boredom.
This is a book of promise unfulfilled. It was the last of the Booker shortlist that I read, and it was the weakest.
The word ‘Potentially’ should have preceded the publisher’s blurb of “Suspenseful, sweeping, piercingly intimate”, because the opportunities to create that kind of story were squandered. There was a rich substrate to mine: the struggles of the Bengali communist party, the reconciliation of politics with the realities of everyday family life, immigration and integration, grief and its effects, and the evolution of people as they grow from youth to middle age to their winters. None of these were explored; they were merely described.
The book spans over fifty years of the adults’ lives, yet fails to recognise that people change as they age. We are not the same in late middle age as we were in early adulthood. We mature, we acquire wisdom (of varying degrees, it’s true, some acquire a lot more than others), we gain insight into complex matters. This is the byproduct of enduring, surviving, aging. But Lahiri’s characters don’t evolve, so they don’t seem real; they remain static, dooming the reader to boredom.
This is a book of promise unfulfilled. It was the last of the Booker shortlist that I read, and it was the weakest.
April 20, 2022
One of the best works of fiction I have ever read. I cried reading it in my office, whisper-screamed “omg” about it on my couch, and raved about it to my friends over FaceTime and Zoom. As a brief plot summary, The Lowland starts out with two brothers living in Calcutta, Subhash, who moves to the United States to attain his doctorate, and Udayan, who joins the Naxalite movement, a rebellion to eliminate inequity and poverty. When Udayan’s involvement in the movement get riskier and more dangerous, the consequences of his actions reverberate across the lives of Subhash and their parents, Gauri, Udayan’s newly pregnant wife, as well as generations to come. I want to do this book justice so I will describe the four main reasons I loved it so much.
Reasons 1 and 2: Jhumpa Lahiri’s characters and her writing. It’s hard to separate these reasons because they feel so intertwined. When it comes to her characters, Lahiri just gets it. She captures people’s core desires and insecurities, often about connection and belonging, and lays them bare on the page. To accomplish this, she uses such restrained and unadorned prose that feels both soothing and immensely precise, like a wire pulled tight and ready for release.
To fanboy her writing with more depth, I feel like Lahiri masters showing and not telling. She writes about such nuanced family dynamics, like, oh, this character has abandonment issues because of her parents, or, this character misses when his daughter had been more dependent on him. Instead of announcing any of these dynamics though, she shows it to us, with writing that feels both effortless and skilled. I felt such deep care for Subhash, Gauri, and Bela, flaws and all. Because of Lahiri’s prose, I felt these characters’ emotions on my skin and in my heart, as if they were my own.
Reason 3: Lahiri also does an excellent job of showing how one moment in time or one movement in history can alter the course of several people’s lives in ineluctable ways. While that sentiment may sound obvious, like, duh, moments in time affect people later on, Lahiri renders this idea in through the lives of her characters with great poignancy and precision. Given Lahiri’s attention to detail in the historical events she portrays and in how she writes about her characters, each development in her characters’ lives felt even more quietly momentous because we can see the past behind each new event. She also captures how forces such as heteronormativity and women’s restricted autonomy because of patriarchy affect people’s decisions in heartbreaking ways.
Reason 4: On a personal note, as the child of Vietnamese refugees to the United States, I feel like reading this book helped me develop a deeper empathy for my parents than I ever had before while still holding them accountable for the ways they failed me. While I can’t speak to the experience of Indian people specifically, I often feel like parents who are immigrants or refugees are so often portrayed as one of two extremes, either as backward in their ideas and beliefs (e.g., “tiger parents”) or as all-sacrificing super humans. In The Lowland, Jhumpa Lahiri casts these characters as human, with both imperfections and considerable resiliency, to survive even through upheaval and displacement.
I feel so thankful to Jhumpa Lahiri for this book. One, for a phenomenal story and her beautiful writing. Two, I know this book has changed my life and perspective for the better. Such is the power of fiction, and in this case The Lowland specifically.
Also, for those who have already read the book, I want to describe a few scenes that I fanboyed the freak out about. There are dozens that evoked great emotion from me though to name a few:
Reasons 1 and 2: Jhumpa Lahiri’s characters and her writing. It’s hard to separate these reasons because they feel so intertwined. When it comes to her characters, Lahiri just gets it. She captures people’s core desires and insecurities, often about connection and belonging, and lays them bare on the page. To accomplish this, she uses such restrained and unadorned prose that feels both soothing and immensely precise, like a wire pulled tight and ready for release.
To fanboy her writing with more depth, I feel like Lahiri masters showing and not telling. She writes about such nuanced family dynamics, like, oh, this character has abandonment issues because of her parents, or, this character misses when his daughter had been more dependent on him. Instead of announcing any of these dynamics though, she shows it to us, with writing that feels both effortless and skilled. I felt such deep care for Subhash, Gauri, and Bela, flaws and all. Because of Lahiri’s prose, I felt these characters’ emotions on my skin and in my heart, as if they were my own.
Reason 3: Lahiri also does an excellent job of showing how one moment in time or one movement in history can alter the course of several people’s lives in ineluctable ways. While that sentiment may sound obvious, like, duh, moments in time affect people later on, Lahiri renders this idea in through the lives of her characters with great poignancy and precision. Given Lahiri’s attention to detail in the historical events she portrays and in how she writes about her characters, each development in her characters’ lives felt even more quietly momentous because we can see the past behind each new event. She also captures how forces such as heteronormativity and women’s restricted autonomy because of patriarchy affect people’s decisions in heartbreaking ways.
Reason 4: On a personal note, as the child of Vietnamese refugees to the United States, I feel like reading this book helped me develop a deeper empathy for my parents than I ever had before while still holding them accountable for the ways they failed me. While I can’t speak to the experience of Indian people specifically, I often feel like parents who are immigrants or refugees are so often portrayed as one of two extremes, either as backward in their ideas and beliefs (e.g., “tiger parents”) or as all-sacrificing super humans. In The Lowland, Jhumpa Lahiri casts these characters as human, with both imperfections and considerable resiliency, to survive even through upheaval and displacement.
I feel so thankful to Jhumpa Lahiri for this book. One, for a phenomenal story and her beautiful writing. Two, I know this book has changed my life and perspective for the better. Such is the power of fiction, and in this case The Lowland specifically.
Also, for those who have already read the book, I want to describe a few scenes that I fanboyed the freak out about. There are dozens that evoked great emotion from me though to name a few:
September 14, 2020
The Lowland, Jhumpa Lahiri
The Lowland is the second novel by American author of Indian origin Jhumpa Lahiri, published by Alfred A. Knopf and Random House in 2013.
Part I: Raised in Tollygunge in Calcutta, brothers Subhash and Udayan are inseparable; they find joy in fixing and listening to radios, learning Morse Code, and looking out for each other at school.
When they leave home for university studies, their ideologies are challenged; Udayan embraces the Naxalite Movement while Subhash is more interested in further education in preparation for his career and leaves for graduate studies in Rhode Island.
Subhash learns that despite the massive bloodshed as a result of the Naxalite Movement, all attention from the press is focused on the Vietnam War; this becomes crystal clear to him when his roommate Richard, an earnest student activist, ignorantly remarks "Naxalbari? What's that?" At the end of his first year in the United States, Subhash learns that Udayan has found a wife, Gauri. ...
Part II: Gauri, who meets Udayan through her brother, is at first apathetic to him. As time passes, however, they talk and trade ideas. ...
Part III: Subhash returns to Calcutta to find Gauri staying with his parents, who do not treat her with respect. Gauri is pregnant with Udayan's child. His mother Bijoli and his father plan to take the child and forsake Gauri. He asks what happened to Udayan but parents refuse to tell him but Gauri does tell him after initially offering some resistance. ...
Part IV: Gauri agrees to Subhash's proposal, but is still distraught. She distracts herself, however, by going to the nearby university and sitting-in on philosophy lectures. She then gives birth to Bela. Shortly after, Subhash and Gauri have sex for the first time, although it is unsatisfying for both parties. ...
Part V: Subhash's father dies sometimes while Subhash is in the states but Subhash is not able to visit Calcutta to pay his respects until Bela is seven. Subhash brings Bela and tells his mother in a letter not to reveal Udayan's connection to Bela during their stay. However, one day, while Bijoli is in a trance, she asks Bela where her father is before snapping out of it, almost revealing the truth. Bela sees pictures of Udayan and asks Subhash who it is. He responds that he is Udayan, her deceased uncle. During their final days in Calcutta, they go shopping for gifts for Bijoli and Gauri. When they return to Rhode Island, they learn that Gauri has left. ...
Part VI: After bouncing around all of California teaching, Gauri finds a stable job teaching at presumably one of the Claremont Colleges. Gauri contemplates reaching out to Subhash, Bela, and her friends but never does, living a mostly solitary life. ...
Part VII: Gauri, in her later years, receives a visit from graduate student Dipankar who wishes to write a dissertation about the Naxalite movement and SDS and approaches her looking for a primary source (Gauri attended Presidency before moving to Rhode Island). She says that she will help him but does not want to be acknowledged. ...
Part VIII: Subhash and Elise marry and go on their honeymoon to Kenmare, Elise's ancestral homeland. When he sees certain rock formations, he is reminded of Udayan. The final chapter revisits the day Udayan was killed. Udayan is no angel; he participates in murder. Despite this, he feels some regret, feeling that if he had met Gauri a little sooner, he could have saved himself from such a life. As he dies, he thinks fondly of Gauri.
تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز نخست ماه جولای سال 2015میلادی
عنوان: زمین پست؛ نویسنده: جومپا لاهیری؛ مترجم: منیژه جلالی؛ تهران، البرز، 1392؛ در 477ص؛ شا��ک 9789644428746؛ موضوع داستانهای نویسندگان هندی تبار آمریکایی - سده 21م
عنوان: گودی؛ نویسنده: جومپا لاهیری؛ مترجم: امیرمهدی حقیقت؛ تهران، ماهی، 1393؛ در 408ص؛ شابک 9789642090266؛ چاپ دوم 1393؛ چاپ چهارم 1397؛
عنوان دومین رمان نویسنده ی هندی تبار آمریکایی «جومپا لاهیری»، همین کتاب «گودی (زمین پست)» است، که نخستین بار انتشارات «آلفرد ای. ناپ و راندوم هاوس» آنرا در سال 2013میلادی منتشر کردند؛ رمان به داستان زندگی دو برادر به نامهای: «سوبهاش» و «اودایان»، در دهه های 1950میلادی و 1960میلادی، در «کلکته» میپردازد؛ که یکی به جنبش «ناکزال هند» میپیوند، و دیگری به آمریکا مهاجرت میکند؛ رمان روایت نتیجه ی انتخاب این دو برادر را، بازگو میکند؛ رمان «گودی (زمین پست)» برنده ی جایزه پنجاه هزار دلاری «دی.اس.سی.» برای ادبیات جنوب آسیا، و نامزد «جایزه ی بوکر»، «جایزه کتاب ملی» و «جایزه ادبیات داستانی زنان» بوده است؛ این رمان را بانو «منیژه جلالی» و جناب «امیرمهدی حقیقت»، به فارسی برگردانده اند
تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 23/06/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی
The Lowland is the second novel by American author of Indian origin Jhumpa Lahiri, published by Alfred A. Knopf and Random House in 2013.
Part I: Raised in Tollygunge in Calcutta, brothers Subhash and Udayan are inseparable; they find joy in fixing and listening to radios, learning Morse Code, and looking out for each other at school.
When they leave home for university studies, their ideologies are challenged; Udayan embraces the Naxalite Movement while Subhash is more interested in further education in preparation for his career and leaves for graduate studies in Rhode Island.
Subhash learns that despite the massive bloodshed as a result of the Naxalite Movement, all attention from the press is focused on the Vietnam War; this becomes crystal clear to him when his roommate Richard, an earnest student activist, ignorantly remarks "Naxalbari? What's that?" At the end of his first year in the United States, Subhash learns that Udayan has found a wife, Gauri. ...
Part II: Gauri, who meets Udayan through her brother, is at first apathetic to him. As time passes, however, they talk and trade ideas. ...
Part III: Subhash returns to Calcutta to find Gauri staying with his parents, who do not treat her with respect. Gauri is pregnant with Udayan's child. His mother Bijoli and his father plan to take the child and forsake Gauri. He asks what happened to Udayan but parents refuse to tell him but Gauri does tell him after initially offering some resistance. ...
Part IV: Gauri agrees to Subhash's proposal, but is still distraught. She distracts herself, however, by going to the nearby university and sitting-in on philosophy lectures. She then gives birth to Bela. Shortly after, Subhash and Gauri have sex for the first time, although it is unsatisfying for both parties. ...
Part V: Subhash's father dies sometimes while Subhash is in the states but Subhash is not able to visit Calcutta to pay his respects until Bela is seven. Subhash brings Bela and tells his mother in a letter not to reveal Udayan's connection to Bela during their stay. However, one day, while Bijoli is in a trance, she asks Bela where her father is before snapping out of it, almost revealing the truth. Bela sees pictures of Udayan and asks Subhash who it is. He responds that he is Udayan, her deceased uncle. During their final days in Calcutta, they go shopping for gifts for Bijoli and Gauri. When they return to Rhode Island, they learn that Gauri has left. ...
Part VI: After bouncing around all of California teaching, Gauri finds a stable job teaching at presumably one of the Claremont Colleges. Gauri contemplates reaching out to Subhash, Bela, and her friends but never does, living a mostly solitary life. ...
Part VII: Gauri, in her later years, receives a visit from graduate student Dipankar who wishes to write a dissertation about the Naxalite movement and SDS and approaches her looking for a primary source (Gauri attended Presidency before moving to Rhode Island). She says that she will help him but does not want to be acknowledged. ...
Part VIII: Subhash and Elise marry and go on their honeymoon to Kenmare, Elise's ancestral homeland. When he sees certain rock formations, he is reminded of Udayan. The final chapter revisits the day Udayan was killed. Udayan is no angel; he participates in murder. Despite this, he feels some regret, feeling that if he had met Gauri a little sooner, he could have saved himself from such a life. As he dies, he thinks fondly of Gauri.
تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز نخست ماه جولای سال 2015میلادی
عنوان: زمین پست؛ نویسنده: جومپا لاهیری؛ مترجم: منیژه جلالی؛ تهران، البرز، 1392؛ در 477ص؛ شا��ک 9789644428746؛ موضوع داستانهای نویسندگان هندی تبار آمریکایی - سده 21م
عنوان: گودی؛ نویسنده: جومپا لاهیری؛ مترجم: امیرمهدی حقیقت؛ تهران، ماهی، 1393؛ در 408ص؛ شابک 9789642090266؛ چاپ دوم 1393؛ چاپ چهارم 1397؛
عنوان دومین رمان نویسنده ی هندی تبار آمریکایی «جومپا لاهیری»، همین کتاب «گودی (زمین پست)» است، که نخستین بار انتشارات «آلفرد ای. ناپ و راندوم هاوس» آنرا در سال 2013میلادی منتشر کردند؛ رمان به داستان زندگی دو برادر به نامهای: «سوبهاش» و «اودایان»، در دهه های 1950میلادی و 1960میلادی، در «کلکته» میپردازد؛ که یکی به جنبش «ناکزال هند» میپیوند، و دیگری به آمریکا مهاجرت میکند؛ رمان روایت نتیجه ی انتخاب این دو برادر را، بازگو میکند؛ رمان «گودی (زمین پست)» برنده ی جایزه پنجاه هزار دلاری «دی.اس.سی.» برای ادبیات جنوب آسیا، و نامزد «جایزه ی بوکر»، «جایزه کتاب ملی» و «جایزه ادبیات داستانی زنان» بوده است؛ این رمان را بانو «منیژه جلالی» و جناب «امیرمهدی حقیقت»، به فارسی برگردانده اند
تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 23/06/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی
December 8, 2019
"Behind the water hyacinth, in the flood water of the Lowland: this was where, If the neighborhood was raided, Udayan had told her he would hide. He told her that there was a section where the growth was particularly dense. He kept the kerosene tin behind the house, to help him over the back wall. Even with the injured hand, he could manage it. He’d practiced it, late at night, a few times."
Hey Jhumpa!
Your name is so rhythmic that I could not resist myself addressing you while writing my thoughts about your book. It has some musical inkling in it, though I am not at all aware of its meaning!
I am a fan of your subtle observation and of your crispness when you depict that ambiance in and around the characters in your prose. You do it so well that I usually get immersed in it. I came across your writings for the first time in The Namesake and when I have finished your second book; my opinion about your penning skills, has not changed much.
Though I had not much liked the subject matter of The Namesake, years ago when I read it, I can give it another try anytime soon, with this confession that I have now somehow, developed the patience and a kind of forbearance, of venturing into the realms of those stories, which were never my cup of tea a few years back.
Comparing to that I liked this story more because of its range and prevalence not only in terms of space and time but also in terms of the sweep, it has produced within and outside of those relationships, which you carried forward to the next generations of your characters.
You began your story of two brothers Subhash and Udayan, who had never set the foot in the Tolly Club, like most people in the vicinity, they had passed by its wooden gate, it's brick walls hundreds of times.
“Subhash brought his hands together. He felt the weight of his brother‘s foot, the worn sole of his sandal, then his whole body, bearing down for an instant. Quickly Udayan hoisted himself up. He straddled the wall.”
One of them later applies for a Ph.D. in the US and the other one gets affected by the early Naxalite movement of the late 1960s emanating and gaining ground from the Naxalbari region.
“Udayan quoted what the Chinese press had predicted: the spark in Darjeeling will start a prairie fire and will certainly set the vast expanses of India ablaze.”
There are repulsive characters in your novel. There is infatuation. Atonement is there. There are interlinking tragedies, painful events and their life-long impressions going from one generation to others in your story and then there is your engrossing way of writing the minute details of immigrant lives. I loved it.
But I have two issues once again, first, your prose became quite expository in the midway where I lost interest in the plot and second I felt no emotional connect with the characters, at many places, where I was expecting some emotional dialogues, some feelings and sentiments enfolding your characters. You just moved the story ahead with the single, flat and short line, making it a kind of cerebral progression in the story. That is probably your style; I disfavored it at those points.
While analyzing this, I am very much sure that you’ll be a better short story writer than a novelist, though I am yet to go through your short fictional work. This is just my assumption so far!
However, the final one-third part of your story aroused some of those out of sight sentiments; I was missing since the beginning. The character of Bela and then redemption of Gauri made this book a pleasing reading experience for me.
Overall I would appreciate your daunting effort of painting the Bengali culture with US-style realistic living in the backcloth of historical Naxalite movement. I would call it a representative fiction, where you have represented multiple motifs through your characters. Repercussions of Tollygunge, built on the reclaimed land on the Bay of Bengal, in the lives of people of Rhode Island in America and reverberations of tragedies associated with Udayan’s engagement with Naxalism within the lives of this generation and the next generation have been envisioned by you wonderfully.
Thanks!
Hey Jhumpa!
Your name is so rhythmic that I could not resist myself addressing you while writing my thoughts about your book. It has some musical inkling in it, though I am not at all aware of its meaning!
I am a fan of your subtle observation and of your crispness when you depict that ambiance in and around the characters in your prose. You do it so well that I usually get immersed in it. I came across your writings for the first time in The Namesake and when I have finished your second book; my opinion about your penning skills, has not changed much.
Though I had not much liked the subject matter of The Namesake, years ago when I read it, I can give it another try anytime soon, with this confession that I have now somehow, developed the patience and a kind of forbearance, of venturing into the realms of those stories, which were never my cup of tea a few years back.
Comparing to that I liked this story more because of its range and prevalence not only in terms of space and time but also in terms of the sweep, it has produced within and outside of those relationships, which you carried forward to the next generations of your characters.
You began your story of two brothers Subhash and Udayan, who had never set the foot in the Tolly Club, like most people in the vicinity, they had passed by its wooden gate, it's brick walls hundreds of times.
“Subhash brought his hands together. He felt the weight of his brother‘s foot, the worn sole of his sandal, then his whole body, bearing down for an instant. Quickly Udayan hoisted himself up. He straddled the wall.”
One of them later applies for a Ph.D. in the US and the other one gets affected by the early Naxalite movement of the late 1960s emanating and gaining ground from the Naxalbari region.
“Udayan quoted what the Chinese press had predicted: the spark in Darjeeling will start a prairie fire and will certainly set the vast expanses of India ablaze.”
There are repulsive characters in your novel. There is infatuation. Atonement is there. There are interlinking tragedies, painful events and their life-long impressions going from one generation to others in your story and then there is your engrossing way of writing the minute details of immigrant lives. I loved it.
But I have two issues once again, first, your prose became quite expository in the midway where I lost interest in the plot and second I felt no emotional connect with the characters, at many places, where I was expecting some emotional dialogues, some feelings and sentiments enfolding your characters. You just moved the story ahead with the single, flat and short line, making it a kind of cerebral progression in the story. That is probably your style; I disfavored it at those points.
While analyzing this, I am very much sure that you’ll be a better short story writer than a novelist, though I am yet to go through your short fictional work. This is just my assumption so far!
However, the final one-third part of your story aroused some of those out of sight sentiments; I was missing since the beginning. The character of Bela and then redemption of Gauri made this book a pleasing reading experience for me.
Overall I would appreciate your daunting effort of painting the Bengali culture with US-style realistic living in the backcloth of historical Naxalite movement. I would call it a representative fiction, where you have represented multiple motifs through your characters. Repercussions of Tollygunge, built on the reclaimed land on the Bay of Bengal, in the lives of people of Rhode Island in America and reverberations of tragedies associated with Udayan’s engagement with Naxalism within the lives of this generation and the next generation have been envisioned by you wonderfully.
Thanks!
February 18, 2016
Not all women should be mothers. Not all mothers love their children. This should be written about more. Also, not everyone gets wiser as they get older and “time heals all wounds” is bullshit.
These are some of the themes of The Lowland.
What I’ve noticed about both Lahiri novels I’ve read is that she is a master at writing about complete down-to-the-bone aloneness. There’s that (clichéd) lonely-disorientated immigrant experience that I relate to, but she also takes it further to a place that’s hard to explain to those that haven’t left their home country. The isolation you feel in your new country merged with the estrangement you feel from your birth country, discarded by your people as a ‘stranger’, and it’s all twisted up inside because you did it to yourself. You left. Husbands get left, children get left, families and memories get left. All that remains, it seems, is guilt.
With her own hand she'd painted herself into a corner, and then out of the picture altogether.
Are you supposed to feel a connection with people because you’re related to them? Because they gave birth to you, or raised you, or lived in the same house with you for years? Is there something wrong with you if you feel nothing for them? Is this common and unspoken, or are you an anomaly?
They were a family of solitaries. They had collided and dispersed.
While reading The Lowland I kept thinking that I didn’t like it as much as The Namesake, that it wasn’t as good. Maybe that’s true. But I had the same raw emotional reaction to both books and that counts for a lot with me.
These are some of the themes of The Lowland.
What I’ve noticed about both Lahiri novels I’ve read is that she is a master at writing about complete down-to-the-bone aloneness. There’s that (clichéd) lonely-disorientated immigrant experience that I relate to, but she also takes it further to a place that’s hard to explain to those that haven’t left their home country. The isolation you feel in your new country merged with the estrangement you feel from your birth country, discarded by your people as a ‘stranger’, and it’s all twisted up inside because you did it to yourself. You left. Husbands get left, children get left, families and memories get left. All that remains, it seems, is guilt.
With her own hand she'd painted herself into a corner, and then out of the picture altogether.
Are you supposed to feel a connection with people because you’re related to them? Because they gave birth to you, or raised you, or lived in the same house with you for years? Is there something wrong with you if you feel nothing for them? Is this common and unspoken, or are you an anomaly?
They were a family of solitaries. They had collided and dispersed.
While reading The Lowland I kept thinking that I didn’t like it as much as The Namesake, that it wasn’t as good. Maybe that’s true. But I had the same raw emotional reaction to both books and that counts for a lot with me.
April 15, 2021
“No puedo ser padre… después de lo que hecho.”Hay novelas que consiguen cabrearme, como las que me gustan, o me gustarían, a pesar de lo alejado que estoy de aquello que defienden, o las que estropean una maravillosa trama con un final indigno, o las que me defraudan de mala manera en mis altas expectativas. En el polo opuesto están las que me dan pena. Son las que pienso que deberían gustarme, que poseen la calidad suficiente para ello, con las que estoy de acuerdo con su fondo y que, sin embargo, no alcanzan a pellizcarme ni un poquito. Esta es una de ellas.
Bien es verdad que toda la primera mitad de la novela, unas doscientas páginas, me ha parecido una larguísima introducción al relato, por muy interesante que fuera todo lo relacionado con el movimiento naxalita y la fundación del Partido Comunista de la India, la diferente actitud de los dos hermanos ante las injusticias, ante los métodos para combatirlas, ante la fe en poder hacerlo. Pero es el conflicto familiar y los sentimientos filiales, el compromiso, la responsabilidad, la culpa, la trascendencia de nuestros actos, todo lo que surge tras el hecho trágico que sucede en la hondonada, el verdadero meollo de la novela.
“Lo había hecho, había hecho lo peor que podía imaginar que pudiera hacer.”Un relato sencillo en su forma y complejo y, a veces, desconcertante en su fondo, sin lirismo ni grandes frases, levantado con sensibilidad e inteligencia sobre fuertes personajes femeninos y una interesante historia, pero que, pese a los buenos ingredientes, algo falla en la receta o en la cocinera o, no descarto nada, en el comensal que esto les cuenta.
September 30, 2013
Two brothers, born fifteen months apart in Calcutta, India, inseparable until the 1960's when they are both in their mid twenties and their interests begin to diverge. Udayar becomes a follower of Mao's revolutionary politics and joins the Naxalite movement. Which I had to look up on the all knowing wiki. Subhash goes to America to continue his studies.
As I was reading this I felt as if the first half was like an outline, just the bare bones of the characters personalities were being revealed. Much of the political situation was more detailed. In the second half this changed and all the little touches, the observations of place, people and time that Lahiri's prose is noted for, came alive.
This is a story of regret, of mistakes made, how one person, alive and dead could effect so many for so long. It is about being unable to forgive oneself and living a life of penance and atonement. Their is some wonderful prose here, some very visual observations about the price of violence and revolution. At times I did feel that Lahiri was portraying her characters at a remove, an almost emotionless narrative of their lives. By the time I finished this book I realized just how well her technique worked because I felt that I knew them and understood them very well. It was just so gradual that until the end I could not put it together.
If the reader is patient with this novel, I believe many will feel the same way.
As I was reading this I felt as if the first half was like an outline, just the bare bones of the characters personalities were being revealed. Much of the political situation was more detailed. In the second half this changed and all the little touches, the observations of place, people and time that Lahiri's prose is noted for, came alive.
This is a story of regret, of mistakes made, how one person, alive and dead could effect so many for so long. It is about being unable to forgive oneself and living a life of penance and atonement. Their is some wonderful prose here, some very visual observations about the price of violence and revolution. At times I did feel that Lahiri was portraying her characters at a remove, an almost emotionless narrative of their lives. By the time I finished this book I realized just how well her technique worked because I felt that I knew them and understood them very well. It was just so gradual that until the end I could not put it together.
If the reader is patient with this novel, I believe many will feel the same way.
October 29, 2013
Like her other books, this is beautifully written. Unfortunately, I really didn't like any of the characters, and the narrative was so bland and impersonal this might've easily been a non-fiction history of the factions of Indian politics in the last quarter of the 20th century. The story (if it can be called that) is ambiguous, the characters do not relate to each other in ways I recognize or that seem authentic- very unnatural, stilted and hard to believe. I guess what was most puzzling here for me reading this after having enjoyed her other work SO much was the lack of depth.
The story is this: 2 brothers grow up in India in the 60s; while they are very close they take very different paths. One becomes involved in a fringe communist protest group & one leaves India to pursue graduate school in the US. (OK that's what most of her books have in common) The political brother becomes more entangled in terrorist type protests and along the way marries the sister of one of his comrades. SPOILER They are together only a short time before he is killed by the Indian police after they discover that he participated in the murder of a police officer. When the brother in America returns to India for his funeral, he discovers that his parents are inhospitable to his brother's pregnant widow; so he nobly marries her and takes her to the US to have the child and raise it as his own. What follows is essentially 40 years of nothing...she has the baby but leaves when the child is 11 or 12 to finish her own studies and then become a professor. Both of the parents seem to waft through their lives with little or no attachment to any of the generally accepted social structures or norms- meaning that they work and that's it. There are no other characters no other complications, no conflicts at all. Their daughter grows up to become an itinerant migrant farm worker going from place to place picking fruit and living her own wackadoodle but boring life until she becomes pregnant by some man passing through her life (no attention or discussion or plot interest even here because he is treated as a sperm donor). Then she moves back with her 60 something year old father and that's about it.
Sorry, I love her other books, but this one is utterly uncompelling. Boring, bland, dry, artificial stilted characters whose experiences bear no relationship to real life, and the entire book has no resonance or depth. Almost insipid, but there isn't even enough going on to be that. Plain oatmeal I guess.
The story is this: 2 brothers grow up in India in the 60s; while they are very close they take very different paths. One becomes involved in a fringe communist protest group & one leaves India to pursue graduate school in the US. (OK that's what most of her books have in common) The political brother becomes more entangled in terrorist type protests and along the way marries the sister of one of his comrades. SPOILER They are together only a short time before he is killed by the Indian police after they discover that he participated in the murder of a police officer. When the brother in America returns to India for his funeral, he discovers that his parents are inhospitable to his brother's pregnant widow; so he nobly marries her and takes her to the US to have the child and raise it as his own. What follows is essentially 40 years of nothing...she has the baby but leaves when the child is 11 or 12 to finish her own studies and then become a professor. Both of the parents seem to waft through their lives with little or no attachment to any of the generally accepted social structures or norms- meaning that they work and that's it. There are no other characters no other complications, no conflicts at all. Their daughter grows up to become an itinerant migrant farm worker going from place to place picking fruit and living her own wackadoodle but boring life until she becomes pregnant by some man passing through her life (no attention or discussion or plot interest even here because he is treated as a sperm donor). Then she moves back with her 60 something year old father and that's about it.
Sorry, I love her other books, but this one is utterly uncompelling. Boring, bland, dry, artificial stilted characters whose experiences bear no relationship to real life, and the entire book has no resonance or depth. Almost insipid, but there isn't even enough going on to be that. Plain oatmeal I guess.
September 26, 2013
Jhumpa Lahiri is gifted with the ability to write beautifully. You read some books for the plot, and others for the sheer love of language. While "The Lowland" satisfied me plot-wise, it was Jhumpa Lahiri's language that blew me away once again. Something I really appreciated about the book was Jhumpa Lahiri's objective take on the political movement that forms the impetus for every plot line in the book. Lahiri stays away from the tempting trap of making a political point, and focuses instead on the effect the movement has on the handful of characters and their lives that form the heart of the book. While I did not strongly identify with any of the characters like I did with "The Namesake," I still found that the story drew me in by being both familiar and foreign at the same time. Every time I thought I had finally figured a character out, they would surprise me. This is a must-read for anyone who loved Jhumpa Lahiri's previous books!
Oh, and I now feel compelled to visit Rhode Island. Lahiri makes it sound absolutely idyllic.
Oh, and I now feel compelled to visit Rhode Island. Lahiri makes it sound absolutely idyllic.
December 18, 2015
"Interpreter of Maladies" (Pulitzer winner), "Unaccustomed Earth", and novel
"The Namesake" we're each so terrific, ... it would be hard for me to choose which of the three I liked better: yet if I 'had' to choose it would be "Unaccustomed Earth" as first favorite.
Each of the books were about relationships - multiple challenges-
and struggles as immigrant families adjust to American Cultural and social norms. Always insightful.... and ALWAYS filled with emotional attachment.
And.. In her two books which are short stories, Lahiri's writing style of weaving stories
together is so realistic - we feel the heartbeat and are deeply emotionally engaged
hanging on to every word she writes. She's a master storyteller.
Yet, in "Lowland", ...although still beautiful writing, I didn't feel the same ..."hanging on-by-a-tread" emotion with this novel. The characters felt somewhat distant - right from the start. I warmed up to the brothers in time....but it took time. I was feeling
more intimacy with the environment --- the descriptions of Calcutta... and later
Rhode Island, than I was with the characters.
At times this story ( about two brothers ...with a woman that touches both of their lives)...reminded me of Abraham Verghese's novel, "Cutting For Stone".
In both novels one brother comes to the United States to study and further themselves ...
In both novels there are great differences between the brothers ..,yet, in this story...I just didn't feel the overall magic - like I did in "Cutting For Stone", or Lahiri's previous books.
I 'do' love this author ... but if you've never read Lahiri before...my vote would be for her previous books first! I absolutely 'love'. all of her other books!!! This was good.. but not 'as' good ....(for me).
3.5 stars
"The Namesake" we're each so terrific, ... it would be hard for me to choose which of the three I liked better: yet if I 'had' to choose it would be "Unaccustomed Earth" as first favorite.
Each of the books were about relationships - multiple challenges-
and struggles as immigrant families adjust to American Cultural and social norms. Always insightful.... and ALWAYS filled with emotional attachment.
And.. In her two books which are short stories, Lahiri's writing style of weaving stories
together is so realistic - we feel the heartbeat and are deeply emotionally engaged
hanging on to every word she writes. She's a master storyteller.
Yet, in "Lowland", ...although still beautiful writing, I didn't feel the same ..."hanging on-by-a-tread" emotion with this novel. The characters felt somewhat distant - right from the start. I warmed up to the brothers in time....but it took time. I was feeling
more intimacy with the environment --- the descriptions of Calcutta... and later
Rhode Island, than I was with the characters.
At times this story ( about two brothers ...with a woman that touches both of their lives)...reminded me of Abraham Verghese's novel, "Cutting For Stone".
In both novels one brother comes to the United States to study and further themselves ...
In both novels there are great differences between the brothers ..,yet, in this story...I just didn't feel the overall magic - like I did in "Cutting For Stone", or Lahiri's previous books.
I 'do' love this author ... but if you've never read Lahiri before...my vote would be for her previous books first! I absolutely 'love'. all of her other books!!! This was good.. but not 'as' good ....(for me).
3.5 stars
July 26, 2016
2.5 stars
Jumpa Lahiri has failed me. I remember loving The Namesake. I read an excerpt of it in The New Yorker and couldn't wait to read the complete novel. But The Lowland, while layered and complex, requires way too much STUDY. This is not an enjoyable book. I found myself bored and restless time and time again. Even at 50 percent in, I was muddling in murky waters.
This book is about the history of India, lots of politics, upheaval, warring parties, etc. I don't adore political history anyway and know very little about Indian history. Generally, historical novel have a way of seeping you in history through plot and characters, but in this book, the characters take second stage to the history. This read more like a dissertation than a work of fiction. There is very little dialogue, and what little there is is served via stream of consciousness without quotation marks (a trend I ABHOR! It's lazy, saving the author time in writing realistic dialogue vs. an approximation of it, and distances the reader from the characters).
The book was slow and reticent, purposely hazy. The two brothers, close in age, are very different (one, angry, restless, protesting corruption, but also selfish, impulsive; the other, static, taking the easier road, detached, settled in his own loneliness), and they remain different, but they don't change or learn or grow or develop as human beings, and their motivations for doing anything feel thrice-removed. There's much mundane detail about day-to-day lives (driving through town, eating dinner) that adds nothing to the story.
Perhaps Lahiri is simply riding on the coat tales of fame? This novel has been incredibly overpraised. The writing was overwrought and overly flowery; the characters dull; and the plot begged, "Ok, so what?" There are THEMES, certainly, and, as an English prof, I'm all for themes, but themes are only threads - what about the pages?
Jumpa Lahiri has failed me. I remember loving The Namesake. I read an excerpt of it in The New Yorker and couldn't wait to read the complete novel. But The Lowland, while layered and complex, requires way too much STUDY. This is not an enjoyable book. I found myself bored and restless time and time again. Even at 50 percent in, I was muddling in murky waters.
This book is about the history of India, lots of politics, upheaval, warring parties, etc. I don't adore political history anyway and know very little about Indian history. Generally, historical novel have a way of seeping you in history through plot and characters, but in this book, the characters take second stage to the history. This read more like a dissertation than a work of fiction. There is very little dialogue, and what little there is is served via stream of consciousness without quotation marks (a trend I ABHOR! It's lazy, saving the author time in writing realistic dialogue vs. an approximation of it, and distances the reader from the characters).
The book was slow and reticent, purposely hazy. The two brothers, close in age, are very different (one, angry, restless, protesting corruption, but also selfish, impulsive; the other, static, taking the easier road, detached, settled in his own loneliness), and they remain different, but they don't change or learn or grow or develop as human beings, and their motivations for doing anything feel thrice-removed. There's much mundane detail about day-to-day lives (driving through town, eating dinner) that adds nothing to the story.
Perhaps Lahiri is simply riding on the coat tales of fame? This novel has been incredibly overpraised. The writing was overwrought and overly flowery; the characters dull; and the plot begged, "Ok, so what?" There are THEMES, certainly, and, as an English prof, I'm all for themes, but themes are only threads - what about the pages?
June 5, 2022
خانم جومپا لاهیری در کتاب گودی ، با استادی و مهارت و با بیانی شیوا و روان زندگی چهار نسل از یک خانواده هندی از کلکته و بنگال تا رودایلند را به تصویر کشیده ، خانم لاهیری در این اثر فراموش نشدنی به دنبال قهرمان نبوده ، شخصیتهای داستان یا قهرمانان او افراد عادی از دل جامعه هندوستان هستند ، کسانی که اگر چه در وهله نخست برای بقا خود می جنگند اما با وجود فشارهای سخت و طاقت فرسا خانواده ، جامعه ، سنت هرگاه که بتوانند با شرایط مبارزه کرده و نه تنها افسار زندگی خود را بدست گرفته و رو در روی خانواده و سنت می ایستند ، بلکه در برابر جامعه و دولت هم دست به شورش می زنند .
هنر خانم لاهیری درکتاب گودی قرار دادن متناقض ها کنار یکدیگر بوده است ، خانواده نیمه سنتی - نیمه مدرن است ، فرزندان یکی به آمریکا رفته و در فرهنگ آن ذوب می شود و دیگری آمریکا را مظهر استعمار و کاپیتالیسم می داند و با آن مبارزه می کند .خانواده که در شرق نمادی از محبت و ثبات است ، در داستان او به مانند همزیستی از روی اجبار در هند و جدایی و بی بند و باری در آمریکاست .
خانم نویسنده نگاهی کوتاه هم به تاریخ هند و ایجاد جنبش مسلحانه ناکسالیت ها در زمان ایندیرا گاندی داشته ، در حقیقت اثری که این جنبش خانواده ، فرزندان آنها می گذارد به قدری زیاد بوده که گذشته ، حال و آینده آنها را همراه با میلونها هندی دیگر رقم زده است .
خانم لاهیری خانواده هایی بدون بنیان را به تصویر کشیده ، چه در هند یا چه در آمریکا . در هند با وجود محدودیت و سنت افراد خانواده از روی اجبار کنار هم جمع می شوند ، اما در آمریکا که اجباری نیست ، هر کسی به راه خود می رود .
نویسنده نگاهی منفی به زادگاه و کشور خود دارد ، او هر زمان که به کلکته باز می گردد از تعفن و شلوغی سخن به میان می آورد ، رفتار خانواده هندی هم با عروس خود دور از تمدن و وحشیانه است ، اما داستان او هنگامی که به آمریکا می رسد رنگ و بوی دیگری می گیرد ، خبری از کثیفی و تبعیض نیست ، آنان به راحتی از سوی آمریکاییها پذیرفته می شوند ، به آسانی درس می خوانند و پیشرفت می کنند ، گوری شخصیت چالشی داستان ، در آمریکا به این نتیجه می رسد که دیگر 4 متر پارچه به دور خود نپیچد و مثل دیگر زنان شود ، او موهای خود را کوتاه می کند و به سبک زنان آمریکا لباس می پوشد.
خانم لاهیری شخیصتهای داستان را به گونه ای باور نکردنی در فرهنگ آمریکا ذوب کرده ، بی بند و باری و آزادی جنسی ، که البته گوری و دخترش در این امر پیشتاز هستند ،سبک زندگی این دو دیگربیش از اندازه آمریکایی به نظر می رسد .
خانم لاهیری در توصیف حداقل نسل اول یک خانواده هندی مهاجر نسبتا موفق بوده است ، هنر او در کتاب گودی آفریدن شخصیتهایی چند بُعدی ایست ، افرادی که دردانشگاه و کار موفق بوده اما توانایی ایجاد رابطه با هم ندارند .
شاید بتوان گفت نظر نویسنده در پایان کتاب به خانواده و نقش آن برگشته ، خانواده که افراد از آن گریزان بوده اند در پایان داستان باز به مانند مکانی ایست که می توان به آن پناه آورد ، با کمک آن ازطوفان حوادث زندگی جان به سلامت برد و حتی می توان به آن وفادار بود .
در پایان کتاب گودی ، با وجود پاره ای از نواقص و نگاه غالب غرب گرایانه نویسنده ، اثری ایست خواندنی که خواننده را با بخش کوچکی از فرهنگ ، شیوه زندگی ملت هند و مهاجران هندی آشنا می کند .
هنر خانم لاهیری درکتاب گودی قرار دادن متناقض ها کنار یکدیگر بوده است ، خانواده نیمه سنتی - نیمه مدرن است ، فرزندان یکی به آمریکا رفته و در فرهنگ آن ذوب می شود و دیگری آمریکا را مظهر استعمار و کاپیتالیسم می داند و با آن مبارزه می کند .خانواده که در شرق نمادی از محبت و ثبات است ، در داستان او به مانند همزیستی از روی اجبار در هند و جدایی و بی بند و باری در آمریکاست .
خانم نویسنده نگاهی کوتاه هم به تاریخ هند و ایجاد جنبش مسلحانه ناکسالیت ها در زمان ایندیرا گاندی داشته ، در حقیقت اثری که این جنبش خانواده ، فرزندان آنها می گذارد به قدری زیاد بوده که گذشته ، حال و آینده آنها را همراه با میلونها هندی دیگر رقم زده است .
خانم لاهیری خانواده هایی بدون بنیان را به تصویر کشیده ، چه در هند یا چه در آمریکا . در هند با وجود محدودیت و سنت افراد خانواده از روی اجبار کنار هم جمع می شوند ، اما در آمریکا که اجباری نیست ، هر کسی به راه خود می رود .
نویسنده نگاهی منفی به زادگاه و کشور خود دارد ، او هر زمان که به کلکته باز می گردد از تعفن و شلوغی سخن به میان می آورد ، رفتار خانواده هندی هم با عروس خود دور از تمدن و وحشیانه است ، اما داستان او هنگامی که به آمریکا می رسد رنگ و بوی دیگری می گیرد ، خبری از کثیفی و تبعیض نیست ، آنان به راحتی از سوی آمریکاییها پذیرفته می شوند ، به آسانی درس می خوانند و پیشرفت می کنند ، گوری شخصیت چالشی داستان ، در آمریکا به این نتیجه می رسد که دیگر 4 متر پارچه به دور خود نپیچد و مثل دیگر زنان شود ، او موهای خود را کوتاه می کند و به سبک زنان آمریکا لباس می پوشد.
خانم لاهیری شخیصتهای داستان را به گونه ای باور نکردنی در فرهنگ آمریکا ذوب کرده ، بی بند و باری و آزادی جنسی ، که البته گوری و دخترش در این امر پیشتاز هستند ،سبک زندگی این دو دیگربیش از اندازه آمریکایی به نظر می رسد .
خانم لاهیری در توصیف حداقل نسل اول یک خانواده هندی مهاجر نسبتا موفق بوده است ، هنر او در کتاب گودی آفریدن شخصیتهایی چند بُعدی ایست ، افرادی که دردانشگاه و کار موفق بوده اما توانایی ایجاد رابطه با هم ندارند .
شاید بتوان گفت نظر نویسنده در پایان کتاب به خانواده و نقش آن برگشته ، خانواده که افراد از آن گریزان بوده اند در پایان داستان باز به مانند مکانی ایست که می توان به آن پناه آورد ، با کمک آن ازطوفان حوادث زندگی جان به سلامت برد و حتی می توان به آن وفادار بود .
در پایان کتاب گودی ، با وجود پاره ای از نواقص و نگاه غالب غرب گرایانه نویسنده ، اثری ایست خواندنی که خواننده را با بخش کوچکی از فرهنگ ، شیوه زندگی ملت هند و مهاجران هندی آشنا می کند .
March 23, 2014
This novel is a timeless story, beautifully written, with historical information. I’m a fan of historical fiction, and I’m very impressed that Lahiri is able to provide a storyline that jumps time. She gives equal measure to each time period, weaving a story of an Indian family who is affected by the Naxalite movement in the 1960s. Not only does this novel provide information on traditional Indian customs, the novel has a classic story of two brothers who chose different paths in the political unrest of India. One brother fights for the cause, while the other brother heads off to Rhode Island to pursue his education. He finds that no one in the USA even is aware of this conflict due to Indira Gandhi controlling the press. Plus, the US was engaged in the Vietnam war at the time. In spite of their differing political views, the family bond keeps them tight. Lahiri writes so well that she’s able to add the US politics of women coming into their time as workforce equals. There are so many layers to this fabulous book: family, duty, feminism, cultural, love, and history. I hadn’t heard of the Naxalite movement, and I was pleased to be educated by Lahiri. It’s a fascinating look at the Indian culture and the difficulties those who come to the US have in integrating into our society. A fantastic read.
February 18, 2017
I see Jhumpa Lahiri as kind of an old-fashioned novelist in the sense that she genuinely cares about things like character development, setting, and storytelling. She's not trying to impress you with how clever she is; she's not setting up some "twist" that's going to make you rethink everything that came before it. She's all about providing an immersive experience that earns all of its emotional high points and epiphanies. This is all to the good, in my opinion. I wish there were more writers out there who took their responsibility to their story as seriously as Lahiri does.
As for The Lowland specifically, I found its plotline much more intriguing than that of The Namesake, but it was somewhat less emotionally satisfying for me. Upon reflection, I think this is simply because The Namesake stayed in Gogol's head nearly the entire time, whereas The Lowland skipped around among Subhash, Gauri, and, to a lesser extent, a few other characters. After The Namesake I longed for a Lahiri novel from a female viewpoint, but sadly here I found the Gauri sections somewhat unsatisfying and mostly couldn't wait to get back to Subhash, the heart of the book. Still, I thought The Lowland was excellent overall and would definitely recommend it to fans of her other works, or fans of good fiction in general.
As for The Lowland specifically, I found its plotline much more intriguing than that of The Namesake, but it was somewhat less emotionally satisfying for me. Upon reflection, I think this is simply because The Namesake stayed in Gogol's head nearly the entire time, whereas The Lowland skipped around among Subhash, Gauri, and, to a lesser extent, a few other characters. After The Namesake I longed for a Lahiri novel from a female viewpoint, but sadly here I found the Gauri sections somewhat unsatisfying and mostly couldn't wait to get back to Subhash, the heart of the book. Still, I thought The Lowland was excellent overall and would definitely recommend it to fans of her other works, or fans of good fiction in general.
February 10, 2017
A bittersweet love story with the main focus being the bitterness of loss expressed over a life time and the consequences. I enjoyed the book overall but I was very disappointed in the ending. I feel that the ending fell very short of what it could have been. Anyways, this was a fantastic read with a lot of depth and emotion.
I hope to read more from this author in the future.
----------------------------------------------------
I want to complete some lists on this site. I thought it would be a good challenge. Kind of like the summer reading lists from school except it's when I can do it and outside of reading the books I already own to take my personal library from just shy of a thousand to the essentials which are the books I reread a lot.
This reading list is the 2013 Man Booker Prize Longlist. Which is an official list for an official award that is serious and has to be earned. I thought it would be a great list to start off with as it is one put together by a nonuser of Goodreads, will most likely have books worth my time, and it is relatively short.
First book read in order to complete list:
https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/4...
I hope to read more from this author in the future.
----------------------------------------------------
I want to complete some lists on this site. I thought it would be a good challenge. Kind of like the summer reading lists from school except it's when I can do it and outside of reading the books I already own to take my personal library from just shy of a thousand to the essentials which are the books I reread a lot.
This reading list is the 2013 Man Booker Prize Longlist. Which is an official list for an official award that is serious and has to be earned. I thought it would be a great list to start off with as it is one put together by a nonuser of Goodreads, will most likely have books worth my time, and it is relatively short.
First book read in order to complete list:
https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/4...
November 1, 2013
A melancholic tale narrated with restraint and distance. Seeing how the tone was set in the beginning, I didn't expect to be drawn in to the story, wasn't sure what to expect.
But call her (Lahiri) the plot whisperer.
Here, time will fascinate you, moving abruptly, standing still, spanning generations and decades--yet still managing to stay organic to the plot. The plot and story have so many intricacies that it is time which directs it all.
Picture two young boys growing up in the 1960s amid the lowland of Calcutta, getting into mischief that suits boys their age. In the background, picture the remnants of the partition of India which led to the division of the Bengal province; picture the infamous Naxalite movement in India (communism; Maoist ideology, Marxist-Leninst politics). Picture one brother being headstrong and the other more conscientious. Picture yourself embracing their closeness at the beginning while also being uncomfortably aware of subtle hints from the third-person narrator that something is about to put a wedge between this brotherhood.
Now fast forward.
See them grow older; meet a bookish young wife who, even in the midst of conservative society, has feminist ideals and crude ambition.
See an obstinate and cruel mother-in-law.
See a marriage made in love and another conceived for convenience.
See the wetlands of a Calcutta neighborhood contrasted with the coast of Rhode Island.
See intellectualism battle civil unrest.
See the living suffer, watch the dead live.
See the ugliness of post traumatic stress disorder.
See one mother live with anguish, see another live with ambivalence.
See your skin crawl from a mother's abandonment.
See what it means to live a life of exile.
See what happens when people refuse to reconcile the past.
See the ghost who ruins.
See happiness intertwined with misery and agony.
See how people can be raised the same, yet lead different lives.
You read some books and through gestures, symbolism and impeccable details, they subtlety teach you things you never knew. This is one such book. Though stylistically different, parts of it reminded me of The Invisible Bridge
This novel has the sophistication of a political novel. I hate to even do this comparison, but close your eyes, and you would think that it was a male author writing about male characters. Told from the third-person narrator point of view, the tone embodies the coping mechanism of the characters: stoicism--just what is needed to accompany a heartrending story without the melodramatics. At times the narration is so distant, it is as if only the storyteller is present (which, by the way, the storytelling here is stupendous). Then just at the right moment, the narration gets closer, so close that you and the character become one, you see their point of view clearly and you may not agree with them but you certainly 'get' them.
I love when I sense characters, when the plot doesn't stray but goes forward with such purpose that all I can do is follow to hear what happens next, learn what I'm supposed to learn. Love when I start to feel sorry for characters, wondering why they all end up so miserable, and then I learn that...wait...I'm wrong because in the end, they all don't end up in misery--though for some it is a long time coming.
But call her (Lahiri) the plot whisperer.
Here, time will fascinate you, moving abruptly, standing still, spanning generations and decades--yet still managing to stay organic to the plot. The plot and story have so many intricacies that it is time which directs it all.
Picture two young boys growing up in the 1960s amid the lowland of Calcutta, getting into mischief that suits boys their age. In the background, picture the remnants of the partition of India which led to the division of the Bengal province; picture the infamous Naxalite movement in India (communism; Maoist ideology, Marxist-Leninst politics). Picture one brother being headstrong and the other more conscientious. Picture yourself embracing their closeness at the beginning while also being uncomfortably aware of subtle hints from the third-person narrator that something is about to put a wedge between this brotherhood.
Now fast forward.
See them grow older; meet a bookish young wife who, even in the midst of conservative society, has feminist ideals and crude ambition.
See an obstinate and cruel mother-in-law.
See a marriage made in love and another conceived for convenience.
See the wetlands of a Calcutta neighborhood contrasted with the coast of Rhode Island.
See intellectualism battle civil unrest.
See the living suffer, watch the dead live.
See the ugliness of post traumatic stress disorder.
See one mother live with anguish, see another live with ambivalence.
See your skin crawl from a mother's abandonment.
See what it means to live a life of exile.
See what happens when people refuse to reconcile the past.
See the ghost who ruins.
See happiness intertwined with misery and agony.
See how people can be raised the same, yet lead different lives.
You read some books and through gestures, symbolism and impeccable details, they subtlety teach you things you never knew. This is one such book. Though stylistically different, parts of it reminded me of The Invisible Bridge
This novel has the sophistication of a political novel. I hate to even do this comparison, but close your eyes, and you would think that it was a male author writing about male characters. Told from the third-person narrator point of view, the tone embodies the coping mechanism of the characters: stoicism--just what is needed to accompany a heartrending story without the melodramatics. At times the narration is so distant, it is as if only the storyteller is present (which, by the way, the storytelling here is stupendous). Then just at the right moment, the narration gets closer, so close that you and the character become one, you see their point of view clearly and you may not agree with them but you certainly 'get' them.
I love when I sense characters, when the plot doesn't stray but goes forward with such purpose that all I can do is follow to hear what happens next, learn what I'm supposed to learn. Love when I start to feel sorry for characters, wondering why they all end up so miserable, and then I learn that...wait...I'm wrong because in the end, they all don't end up in misery--though for some it is a long time coming.
September 3, 2021
اولش میخواستم بگم اوه عجب فیلم هندیای😁یک فیلم هندی تمام عیار! ولی مگه میشه از قلم بینظیر لاهیری تعریف نکرد، از اینکه تو رو به عمق احساسات و عواطف و دغدغههای تک تک شخصیتهاش میبره... داستان دو برادر از یک خانوادهی هندی که هر دو مسیر متفاوتی را برای زندگی در پیش گرفتهاند... ولی غافل از اینکه بلاخره همیشه زندگی چیزی برای پیوند دادن میان آدمها دارد!
December 29, 2014
The political history was interesting - 1960s student radicals in India - but most of The Lowland, which takes place in subsequent decades, is just another overly serious modern American family saga (immigrant subtype).
The unquestioned contrast in personalities of the two central brothers has a mythological quality but Lahiri's writing never achieves the grandeur befitting that. Sensible Subhash would, I'm sure, make an excellent, nice and reliable work colleague but written about as he was here he was of little interest. There wasn't enough insight into fiery commie Udayin, or enough story told from his viewpoint - there is a certain amount of judgement in this book that moderation and domesticity are best. I quite liked Gauri and Bela between approx. pp.200-300, but still, all the US storylines were things I've heard many times before and which don't much interest me as a subject for fiction. ("Stuff normal people like" was a phrase that kept popping into my head to characterise this novel and Lahiri, generally. Alongside Norah Jones, James Blunt and that ilk. Later I cheered Philip Hensher's snark about the book's American-airport-bestseller-style.)
The most laughable episode was this:
(From memory as I don't have a copy with me)
"Do you like it here?" she asked him.
No-one had asked him this before... [He has been there years and this conversation obviously represents his stoicism and unselfishness, and that others have been taking him for granted.
Two or three paragraphs describe a river and a bridge and him looking at same, before he actually replies in any shape or form.]
What an exhausted old nag of a trope. I couldn't quite believe that readers of a highly-lauded author are still supposed to fall for this rubbish.
The worst thing of all? Lahiri's writing style. Her aversion to the word "and"; dull synonyms instead of adjectives. Minimal description, underelaboration leaving me too often unmoved and uncaring about the characters. Oh, the drear! All the bloody commas! For days after I finished The Lowland I cringed when I saw certain Lahiri-like sentence structures in other books.
It's a cumulative effect which is unlikely to bother anyone on the basis of a few quotations. She's at it here, too, in a twee NYT article I clicked on for some reason. ...when I’d only read and heard about Italy, before I’d ever come to Rome is an example of the type of sentence I grew to loathe over 340 pages - almost every one featuring this sort of phrasing - and which now makes me want to throw something at the screen. Her few paragraphs in the article take something beautiful and render it mundane and lifeless to me.
From what I'd seen of previews, reader-reviews, and snideness such as this in the LRB: Even within the seemingly homogeneous sphere of the university English department, a schism has opened up between literary scholarship and creative writing: disciplines which differ in their points of reference (Samuel Richardson v. Jhumpa Lahiri)...
I had suspected I would not enjoy Lahiri's writing, but not that I would almost hate it.
For perhaps the first half of the book I considered myself an ungrateful wretch, having got my mitts on a copy three weeks prior to official release whilst so many people who'd love to read it hadn't. When I started to dread picking it up, and even more dread those sentences, I must admit this guilt quite subsided.
3 stars is generous considering how much The Lowland grated, but as I was setting it alongside other Booker longlisted titles I had to concede that it is a perfectly competent novel that sits together well and makes sense. However, writing this review is making me reconsider whether I should rate this dull humourless litfic over more populist sort of novels which were stereotyped or had plot mis-steps. They were at least a bit more enjoyable to read.
ETA, Nov. This review of Unaccustomed Earth eloquently says a number of things I wish I'd said about Lahiri and her writing.
The unquestioned contrast in personalities of the two central brothers has a mythological quality but Lahiri's writing never achieves the grandeur befitting that. Sensible Subhash would, I'm sure, make an excellent, nice and reliable work colleague but written about as he was here he was of little interest. There wasn't enough insight into fiery commie Udayin, or enough story told from his viewpoint - there is a certain amount of judgement in this book that moderation and domesticity are best. I quite liked Gauri and Bela between approx. pp.200-300, but still, all the US storylines were things I've heard many times before and which don't much interest me as a subject for fiction. ("Stuff normal people like" was a phrase that kept popping into my head to characterise this novel and Lahiri, generally. Alongside Norah Jones, James Blunt and that ilk. Later I cheered Philip Hensher's snark about the book's American-airport-bestseller-style.)
The most laughable episode was this:
(From memory as I don't have a copy with me)
"Do you like it here?" she asked him.
No-one had asked him this before... [He has been there years and this conversation obviously represents his stoicism and unselfishness, and that others have been taking him for granted.
Two or three paragraphs describe a river and a bridge and him looking at same, before he actually replies in any shape or form.]
What an exhausted old nag of a trope. I couldn't quite believe that readers of a highly-lauded author are still supposed to fall for this rubbish.
The worst thing of all? Lahiri's writing style. Her aversion to the word "and"; dull synonyms instead of adjectives. Minimal description, underelaboration leaving me too often unmoved and uncaring about the characters. Oh, the drear! All the bloody commas! For days after I finished The Lowland I cringed when I saw certain Lahiri-like sentence structures in other books.
It's a cumulative effect which is unlikely to bother anyone on the basis of a few quotations. She's at it here, too, in a twee NYT article I clicked on for some reason. ...when I’d only read and heard about Italy, before I’d ever come to Rome is an example of the type of sentence I grew to loathe over 340 pages - almost every one featuring this sort of phrasing - and which now makes me want to throw something at the screen. Her few paragraphs in the article take something beautiful and render it mundane and lifeless to me.
From what I'd seen of previews, reader-reviews, and snideness such as this in the LRB: Even within the seemingly homogeneous sphere of the university English department, a schism has opened up between literary scholarship and creative writing: disciplines which differ in their points of reference (Samuel Richardson v. Jhumpa Lahiri)...
I had suspected I would not enjoy Lahiri's writing, but not that I would almost hate it.
For perhaps the first half of the book I considered myself an ungrateful wretch, having got my mitts on a copy three weeks prior to official release whilst so many people who'd love to read it hadn't. When I started to dread picking it up, and even more dread those sentences, I must admit this guilt quite subsided.
3 stars is generous considering how much The Lowland grated, but as I was setting it alongside other Booker longlisted titles I had to concede that it is a perfectly competent novel that sits together well and makes sense. However, writing this review is making me reconsider whether I should rate this dull humourless litfic over more populist sort of novels which were stereotyped or had plot mis-steps. They were at least a bit more enjoyable to read.
ETA, Nov. This review of Unaccustomed Earth eloquently says a number of things I wish I'd said about Lahiri and her writing.
June 12, 2024
Безличен като героите си - така определям аз втория роман на Джумпа Лахири.
Опитала се е да вплете две сюжетни нишки, богати от към истории и случки, но не се е получило, по мое мнение.
Все пак, научих за червения терор и за убийствата избрани като тактика от индийските комунисти заразени от възгледите на Мао, в опит да завземат насилствено властта в Индия. И за човеколюбивата уж Индира Ганди, за която трябваше лицемерно да скърбим в НРБ, но която не се е поколебала да въведе военно положение и да пусне ескадрони на смъртта, избиващи без съд и присъда…
Имаше няколко момента в книгата, които ми допаднаха, но като цяло съм разочарован - Лахири може много повече!
Опитала се е да вплете две сюжетни нишки, богати от към истории и случки, но не се е получило, по мое мнение.
Все пак, научих за червения терор и за убийствата избрани като тактика от индийските комунисти заразени от възгледите на Мао, в опит да завземат насилствено властта в Индия. И за човеколюбивата уж Индира Ганди, за която трябваше лицемерно да скърбим в НРБ, но която не се е поколебала да въведе военно положение и да пусне ескадрони на смъртта, избиващи без съд и присъда…
Имаше няколко момента в книгата, които ми допаднаха, но като цяло съм разочарован - Лахири може много повече!
October 12, 2019
از جومپا لاهیری و نثر و بیانش تو ریویوهای قبلی زیاد گفتم، این کتاب هم همون حال و هوا رو داره، همون موضوعات و همون جذابیت بی بدیل روایتی که منحصر به خود نویسنده است.
اما گودی تلخ بود خیلی تلخ. تلخی که تا آخر کتاب منتظر رهایی ازش بودم اما هرچی پیش رفت پر رنگتر شد.
شاخصه اصلی شخصیتهای داستانهای لاهیری تنهاییه بنظرم. انگار این آدمها با تمام تجربههای که از سر میگذرونند باز به نقطهای میرسند که چیزی جز خودشون براشون باقی نمیمونه. و این دقیقا واقعیت غیرقابل انکار زندگی بشره، واقعیت صریح و ملموس زندگی آدمها...
اما گودی تلخ بود خیلی تلخ. تلخی که تا آخر کتاب منتظر رهایی ازش بودم اما هرچی پیش رفت پر رنگتر شد.
شاخصه اصلی شخصیتهای داستانهای لاهیری تنهاییه بنظرم. انگار این آدمها با تمام تجربههای که از سر میگذرونند باز به نقطهای میرسند که چیزی جز خودشون براشون باقی نمیمونه. و این دقیقا واقعیت غیرقابل انکار زندگی بشره، واقعیت صریح و ملموس زندگی آدمها...
August 19, 2020
من عاشق این نویسنده شدم باید بقیه ی اثارشو بخونم حیف که اینقدر دیر رفتم سراغشو
August 13, 2024
Jhumpa Lahiri's "The Lowland" is a sorrowful, fast moving and truly operatic novel that weaves past and present, the story of two brothers, the woman they both marry, and the daughter/niece that both anchors and separates these four from one another's lives.
Udayan is the brash, slightly younger revolutionary who is murdered by a volatile government; and Gauri is his widow, who later becomes his quieter and less reactionary brother Subhash's wife as he makes a life for himself in Rhode Island during the 1970s.
Bela is Udayan and Gauri's daughter who becomes Subhash's daughter as well- and these four quietly drawn characters take the reader into Lahiri's signature themes of loss, themes of "the other" and the will to assimilate within American society; often found from her past works such as "Interpreter of Maladies" and "The Namesake".
However this is Lahiri at her most political, and most radical in her writing: for some reason this time around she was more interested in storytelling with the interpolation of the personal and political.
I find this an impressive departure from the sharper skilled books she’s known for.
Lahiri writing a world of political and social violence and the intricacies of characterization are at play here with an aimless abandonment and spontaneity that I find to be an incredible pleasure in having read this bleak novel with a bitter heart.
It is the psychology and coldness of the characters that drew me in, and ironically made them warmer than previous characters in other books with the exception of the characters in “Hema and Kaushik” from Unaccustomed Earth.
Their defiance and stubbornness to change is what makes this an interesting and compelling read.
Udayan is the brash, slightly younger revolutionary who is murdered by a volatile government; and Gauri is his widow, who later becomes his quieter and less reactionary brother Subhash's wife as he makes a life for himself in Rhode Island during the 1970s.
Bela is Udayan and Gauri's daughter who becomes Subhash's daughter as well- and these four quietly drawn characters take the reader into Lahiri's signature themes of loss, themes of "the other" and the will to assimilate within American society; often found from her past works such as "Interpreter of Maladies" and "The Namesake".
However this is Lahiri at her most political, and most radical in her writing: for some reason this time around she was more interested in storytelling with the interpolation of the personal and political.
I find this an impressive departure from the sharper skilled books she’s known for.
Lahiri writing a world of political and social violence and the intricacies of characterization are at play here with an aimless abandonment and spontaneity that I find to be an incredible pleasure in having read this bleak novel with a bitter heart.
It is the psychology and coldness of the characters that drew me in, and ironically made them warmer than previous characters in other books with the exception of the characters in “Hema and Kaushik” from Unaccustomed Earth.
Their defiance and stubbornness to change is what makes this an interesting and compelling read.
September 28, 2013
Jhumpa Lahiri is, hands-down, my favorite writer. The Namesake is part of the reason why I chose to pursue a career in books, and it was very nearly the subject of my master's thesis. I'm not much of a short story reader, but Unaccustomed Earth made me wish I could be a writer.
I just love the way that she examines human nature. Sometimes her themes can be a little repetitive, but her insights are so sharp. I love how her work tends to emphasizes the smaller moments of her characters' lives -- The Namesake condenses an entire thirty-something years into less than 300 pages, but never felt like it was lacking in depth.
The Lowland follows a similar structure, but here Lahiri covers more years and more generations in more pages. It doesn't work quite as well as The Namesake did, but it's still quite powerful.
The book begins with two brothers, Subhash and Udayan, in 1960s Calcutta. Udayan becomes involved in an underground communist movement, while Subhash pursues postgraduate education in America. When Udayan's politics cost him his life, Subhash returns home and learns that his sister-in-law, Guari, is pregnant. Guari is received coldly by the brothers' parents because the marriage was not an arranged one. Knowing that she will essentially be alone, Subhash decides to marry her and take her back to America with him so that she may have a safer, more economically secure life. The books follows their lives well into the twenty-first century.
I think that the metaphorical elements of this book, the aspects that emphasize themes and broader ideas work quite well. That's where Lahiri shines the most. The contrast of Guari's unarranged marriage to Udayan versus a might-as-well-be arranged marriage to Subhash. Guari and Subhash’s differing approaches to parenthood contrasted against their differing paths to parenthood. How their daughter Bela’s approach to life varies from their own. The sacrfices made by each of the brothers in their pursuit of what each sees as the noble path.
Unfortunately, the characters in The Lowland don't shine quite as much. Over the course of this book, we see Udayan and Subhash as young children, experiencing things that will lead to Udayan's desire to join the Naxalite movement during his college years. We see Subhash grow into an old man and Guari's daughter grow into middle age. We see the brothers’ parents reach the end of their lives. And yet, I never felt connected to any of these characters quite the way I expected to. They behaved in complex-yet-predictable ways, but their development sometimes felt mechanical in a way that didn’t allow them to rise up off the page.
Lahiri is a brilliant writer and I can’t not recommend this book. Start with her other works first, if you haven’t already. Read this one for the thematic exploration of cultural and familal obligations – if you want a story where the characters grab you, you may want to pass over this one.
I just love the way that she examines human nature. Sometimes her themes can be a little repetitive, but her insights are so sharp. I love how her work tends to emphasizes the smaller moments of her characters' lives -- The Namesake condenses an entire thirty-something years into less than 300 pages, but never felt like it was lacking in depth.
The Lowland follows a similar structure, but here Lahiri covers more years and more generations in more pages. It doesn't work quite as well as The Namesake did, but it's still quite powerful.
The book begins with two brothers, Subhash and Udayan, in 1960s Calcutta. Udayan becomes involved in an underground communist movement, while Subhash pursues postgraduate education in America. When Udayan's politics cost him his life, Subhash returns home and learns that his sister-in-law, Guari, is pregnant. Guari is received coldly by the brothers' parents because the marriage was not an arranged one. Knowing that she will essentially be alone, Subhash decides to marry her and take her back to America with him so that she may have a safer, more economically secure life. The books follows their lives well into the twenty-first century.
I think that the metaphorical elements of this book, the aspects that emphasize themes and broader ideas work quite well. That's where Lahiri shines the most. The contrast of Guari's unarranged marriage to Udayan versus a might-as-well-be arranged marriage to Subhash. Guari and Subhash’s differing approaches to parenthood contrasted against their differing paths to parenthood. How their daughter Bela’s approach to life varies from their own. The sacrfices made by each of the brothers in their pursuit of what each sees as the noble path.
Unfortunately, the characters in The Lowland don't shine quite as much. Over the course of this book, we see Udayan and Subhash as young children, experiencing things that will lead to Udayan's desire to join the Naxalite movement during his college years. We see Subhash grow into an old man and Guari's daughter grow into middle age. We see the brothers’ parents reach the end of their lives. And yet, I never felt connected to any of these characters quite the way I expected to. They behaved in complex-yet-predictable ways, but their development sometimes felt mechanical in a way that didn’t allow them to rise up off the page.
Lahiri is a brilliant writer and I can’t not recommend this book. Start with her other works first, if you haven’t already. Read this one for the thematic exploration of cultural and familal obligations – if you want a story where the characters grab you, you may want to pass over this one.
July 23, 2013
First let me say that Jhumpa Lahiri is my goddess of literature. I read a lot – maybe 75 books a year – and I have rarely fallen under the spell of a book the way I did with Interpreter of Maladies. Her follow-up collection of short stories, Unaccustomed Earth, was also an unqualified 5-star success.
So I was dying to get my hands on her new novel, The Lowland. I read through it eagerly but I closed the last page with mixed feelings.
Let’s start with the good: Ms. Lahiri is a natural-born storyteller. In this book, she introduces two brothers, close in age who are poles apart – Udayan, the revolutionary brother who gets caught up in the Mao-inspired Naxalite movement to wipe out poverty in India and his more reserved and dutiful brother, Subhash, who leaves home to pursue an academic and scientific life in Rhode Island. When Udayan inevitably gets swept into a revolutionary movement that turns out badly, Subhash returns home –briefly – and picks up the pieces, including an attempt to heal the emotional scars of his brother’s young wife.
As the plot goes on – and it is not my desire to encapsulate the plot or to create spoilers – about 70 years of family history is condensed into a mere 340 pages. Themes play out and then they play out again: the connections that make and break us, the intertwining to people we cannot truly see or know, the way we are defined by the place we call “home”, the quiet differences we make in the world. It’s all wound up in the history of India and indeed, Ms. Lahiri is at her very finest when she’s describing Indian customs or lifestyles as only an insider can.
There’s some lovely craftsmanship here, not bells and whistles, but quiet and contemplative -- even shimmering – moments. The problem is, I never found it to be very compelling. Because of all the years and generations (four of them) that Ms. Lahiri has to cover, she can only provide sketches of her characters. And they never truly come alive.
Yes, Udayan is the fiery revolutionary…but what made him so and why was he willing to sacrifice so much (the headiness of youth and a sense of fairness should only be the beginning). His wife, Guari, who eventually bonds with Subhash, was an enigma to be throughout. She is a distanced character, and her actions begin to feel somewhat predictable; the reader is never treated to her resonance and depth. And Bela, her daughter, is only revealed in limited emotional scope.
A novel, unlike a short story, demands a considerable emotional tension, a multi-textured richness that makes characters leap off the page. I never really sensed the two-dimensionality, possibly because the story line was multi-generational and ambitious. The litmus test of whether or not you will love this book is this: if you loved Namesake, this is definitely a book for you, since stylistically, there are similarities. If you are, instead, a fan of her short stories, you may or may not be engaged. Judge for yourself.
So I was dying to get my hands on her new novel, The Lowland. I read through it eagerly but I closed the last page with mixed feelings.
Let’s start with the good: Ms. Lahiri is a natural-born storyteller. In this book, she introduces two brothers, close in age who are poles apart – Udayan, the revolutionary brother who gets caught up in the Mao-inspired Naxalite movement to wipe out poverty in India and his more reserved and dutiful brother, Subhash, who leaves home to pursue an academic and scientific life in Rhode Island. When Udayan inevitably gets swept into a revolutionary movement that turns out badly, Subhash returns home –briefly – and picks up the pieces, including an attempt to heal the emotional scars of his brother’s young wife.
As the plot goes on – and it is not my desire to encapsulate the plot or to create spoilers – about 70 years of family history is condensed into a mere 340 pages. Themes play out and then they play out again: the connections that make and break us, the intertwining to people we cannot truly see or know, the way we are defined by the place we call “home”, the quiet differences we make in the world. It’s all wound up in the history of India and indeed, Ms. Lahiri is at her very finest when she’s describing Indian customs or lifestyles as only an insider can.
There’s some lovely craftsmanship here, not bells and whistles, but quiet and contemplative -- even shimmering – moments. The problem is, I never found it to be very compelling. Because of all the years and generations (four of them) that Ms. Lahiri has to cover, she can only provide sketches of her characters. And they never truly come alive.
Yes, Udayan is the fiery revolutionary…but what made him so and why was he willing to sacrifice so much (the headiness of youth and a sense of fairness should only be the beginning). His wife, Guari, who eventually bonds with Subhash, was an enigma to be throughout. She is a distanced character, and her actions begin to feel somewhat predictable; the reader is never treated to her resonance and depth. And Bela, her daughter, is only revealed in limited emotional scope.
A novel, unlike a short story, demands a considerable emotional tension, a multi-textured richness that makes characters leap off the page. I never really sensed the two-dimensionality, possibly because the story line was multi-generational and ambitious. The litmus test of whether or not you will love this book is this: if you loved Namesake, this is definitely a book for you, since stylistically, there are similarities. If you are, instead, a fan of her short stories, you may or may not be engaged. Judge for yourself.
February 16, 2019
I have had mixed feelings about Lahiri in the past, but I enjoyed this novel whilst being unsure of what Lahiri was trying to do with it. There isn’t a cast of thousands, but it is a family drama starting in India and moving to the US. The focus of the novel is two brothers Subhash and Udayan. They are born in Calcutta fifteen months apart, just after the Second World War. There is a patch of land near where they live in Tollygunge with two ponds and close to the exclusive Tolly club. The brothers are close and the reader is taken through childhood and into the mid-1960s towards college. Udayan is always the leader.
The two brothers begin to drift apart. Subhash goes to college in Rhode Island to study. Udayan becomes involved in radical politics and joins the Naxalite movement, Maoist in politics and potentially violent. Udayan also marries Gauri, in secret, only telling his parents afterwards. Udayan is shot by the police on the patch of ground hear his home. Gauri is pregnant. Subhash returns for the funeral and marries Gauri, although they do not love each other. They return to the US. This all takes place in the first quarter of the book. The rest of the book follows Subhash, Gauri and her daughter Bela up to the present day.
Lahiri captures the immigrant experience in America through the eyes of Subhash:
“The difference was so extreme that he could not accommodate the two places together in his mind. In this enormous new country, there seemed to be nowhere for the old to reside. There was nothing to link them; he was the sole link.”
The first section of the novel is gripping, however the rest is much more evenly paced and is really about living life and dealing with the past. There is a focus on family relationships. There is a sense of destinies displaced and the grinding mundaneness of life. There is a reality to this rather than elegance. And a story of fraternal bonds that linger beyond death. There are niggles, the relationship between Gauri and Subhash, for me didn’t ring true in the way it played out, especially in relation to Bela. The novel does play out the universal nature of human hopes and fears, it is well written and I enjoyed it. But it didn’t really do any more than that. I’m not sure what more I wanted, more of an edge perhaps.
The two brothers begin to drift apart. Subhash goes to college in Rhode Island to study. Udayan becomes involved in radical politics and joins the Naxalite movement, Maoist in politics and potentially violent. Udayan also marries Gauri, in secret, only telling his parents afterwards. Udayan is shot by the police on the patch of ground hear his home. Gauri is pregnant. Subhash returns for the funeral and marries Gauri, although they do not love each other. They return to the US. This all takes place in the first quarter of the book. The rest of the book follows Subhash, Gauri and her daughter Bela up to the present day.
Lahiri captures the immigrant experience in America through the eyes of Subhash:
“The difference was so extreme that he could not accommodate the two places together in his mind. In this enormous new country, there seemed to be nowhere for the old to reside. There was nothing to link them; he was the sole link.”
The first section of the novel is gripping, however the rest is much more evenly paced and is really about living life and dealing with the past. There is a focus on family relationships. There is a sense of destinies displaced and the grinding mundaneness of life. There is a reality to this rather than elegance. And a story of fraternal bonds that linger beyond death. There are niggles, the relationship between Gauri and Subhash, for me didn’t ring true in the way it played out, especially in relation to Bela. The novel does play out the universal nature of human hopes and fears, it is well written and I enjoyed it. But it didn’t really do any more than that. I’m not sure what more I wanted, more of an edge perhaps.
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