Intrepreter of Maladies - 2000

Title: Interpreter of Maladies
Author:  Jhumpa Lahiri
Published:  1999, Mariner Books
Genre: Literary Fiction
Accolades:  2000 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, 2000 Hemingway Foundation /PEN Award

I know, I know I have absolutely no excuse on why I haven't read this amazing book before - especially since it's been sitting on my shelf for at least two years.  I am so happy that I finally did decide to read it and now I have a girl crush on a new to me author.

Interpreter of Maladies is a collection of nine short stories that focus on Indians and first generation Indian Americans as they face subtle and not so subtle cultural differences that leaves each character feeling isolated and wanting in a new country. Many of the stories also center on arranged marriages and have a lingering sadness as the characters try to maneuver and assimilate to life in their new worlds with people that they barely know.

Lahiri writes each story with a refined elegance that literally took my breath away.  Her writing is reflective and touching as she helps the reader find the soul in each flawed character. My favorite story was The Third and Final Continent (it's also the only story with a positive ending). All the characters in The Third and Final Continent, whether it's the newly arrived Indian immigrant or the ninety-nine-year-old American woman, feel alienated. Lahiri gently shows the reader that we all suffer from the human condition and need to hold on to each other to navigate in our worlds.

If you haven't read this book - you should.  Lahiri is a master of the short story.  After reading Interpreter of Maladies I wanted to read more books by Lahiri - always a good sign.

Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri (Jill)

Interpreter of Maladies
By Jhumpa Lahiri
Completed May 18, 2009

What can I say that hasn’t already been said about Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri? I feel like the last person in the book world who hasn’t read it – and I am not sure what I was waiting for. Interpreter of Maladies was beautiful, poignant and thought-provoking, full of stories and characters that I will remember for a long time.

This Pulitzer winner was a collection of short stories – all centered around “maladies” that affect humans, such as loneliness, homesickness and regret. Each story touches on one malady, brilliantly represented by characters of Indian origin (either living in India or the U.S.). The stories brought the reader through a full range of emotions – sometimes happiness, other times grief. This was no small feat, considering you get to know the characters in only a few pages. That’s a testament to the power of Lahiri’s writing. Each short story evoked an emotional and very human response.

Another reviewer commented that she wished each short story was a full novel. I couldn’t agree more. Interpreter of Maladies packed richness in every punch. I am not an avid reader of short stories – mostly because I want more after finishing the story – but I learned with this book that wanting more is a good thing. Without a doubt, Interpreter of Maladies left me wanting to read more by this talented young writer. ( )

Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri

Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri, 1999
A Collection of Short Stories, 198 pages
Mariner Books/Houghton Mifflin Company

Winner of the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the PEN/Hemingway Award.

Interpreter of Maladies, Lahiri’s first book, is a collection of short stories depicting the lives of Indians or Indian immigrants. Some may immediately wonder how they could relate to the stories or characters. You may not to them individually, but what you will find is that the themes are universal thus eliminating such a concern.

“A Temporary Matter” centers on a couple estranged by the loss of a child:

But nothing was pushing Shukumar. Instead he thought of how he and Shoba had become experts in avoiding each other in their three-bedroom house, spending as much time on separate floors as possible.

“Sexy” about a woman having an affair with a married man and coming to terms with the choices she’s made:

There was no reason to put it on. Apart from the fitting room at Filene’s she had never worn it, and as long as she was with Dev she knew she never would. She knew they would never go to restaurants, where he would reach across a table and kiss her hand. They would meet in her apartment, on Sundays, he in his sweatpants, she in her jeans.

“Mrs. Sen’s” showing the hardships faced emotionally by someone having to adjust to a new life. One in a country where there is little to connect to on any level as there is no immediate family or a community of those with similar backgrounds to lean upon for support, thus the homesickness felt is as much as any one person can bear:

Mrs. Sen took the aerogram from India out of her purse and studied the front and back. She unfolded it and reread it to herself, sighing every now and then. When she had finished she gazed for some time at the swimmers.

“My sister has had a baby girl. By the time I see her, depending if Mr. Sen gets his tenure, she will be three years old. Her own aunt will be a stranger. If we sit side by side on train she will not know my face.”

There are nine stories in total and in each one there was always some aspect that touched me in some way that I could not picture myself, or anyone I know, caught up within those same circumstances and possibly having the same responses. I can say in truth, that I did not understand every nuance in some of the stories, as understanding the culture would have been helpful. But really, it does not detract from the enjoyment I had in reading this book. In fact, it was the first one I completed when participating in the recent Read-A-Thon.

As I stated in an earlier post, this book has got to be one of the better Pulitzer Prize Winners I have read in some time. In addition, I have not read many Short Story collections this year even though I had planned to.

I am glad I decided that this should change. This was a wonderful book and will be a nice addition to my personal library.

For this reason I am giving it 5 stars and a definite ‘must read’ recommendation.

2000 - Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri

I read a review of Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri on this website. The next day, I saw it on display at the library. I hope reading a review of it prompts you to pick it up, too. It is an incredible collection of short stories.

This collection is the author’s first published book. It’s amazing to me because each story is completely captivating, with well-developed, believable characters—so well-written and creative that it won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2000. I want to write—reading this makes it seem like a near-impossibility. How does Lahiri do it so well?

The book contains nine short stories. In each story, one or more characters feel isolated as they search for their place. In “A Temporary Matter,” a man and a woman search for their place in their relationship after the still-birth of their child. In “Interpreter of Maladies,” a tour guide operator in India searches for his relationship to the world when he leads an Indian-American family on a tour. In “Mrs. Sens’”, Mrs. Sen feels isolated from her large extended family, who are in India, and she searches for a place in suburban America; the American boy she watches each afternoon is more at peace with his isolation.

Sadly, most of these stories end on a sad note as the characters reflect on their situations; most end with a sense of loss. The emotions are strong. I felt I needed a break after each story to reflect on the emotions I felt. And yet, I couldn’t wait to be drawn in to the next intricately developed story of isolation.

These stories help me reflect on my own situation: I live 16,000 miles from everyone in my family, just as Mrs. Sens does. But I don’t face differences in culture (suburban Melbourne isn’t all that different from suburban Chicago). How am I coping, and how can I nurture my relationships to avoid isolation? (So far, I'm doing fine.) I hope my ending is a bit happier, and I suspect it will be. But who around me might be feeling isolated? These characters were so real, I felt like they were living next door.

I love a book that makes me think and feel.

First posted here. Come visit me on my blog!

2000: Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri

Interpreter of Maladies is a collection of nine short stories that all involve Indians – some immigrants in America, some in their homeland. A lot of these stories deal with displacement and isolation, but, needless to say, you don’t need to be Indian, or to be an immigrant, to be able to relate to the emotions they convey. All you need is to have experienced loneliness, loss, longing, intimacy, sorrow or joy in the many ways in which they come – in short, all you need is to be human.

Using a language that is subtle, precise, and disarming in its simplicity, Jhumpa Lahiri writes about unhappy couples, happy ones, affairs, a child’s perception of war, youth and old age, emptiness, satisfaction, frustration, dreams both lost and come true.

Most of these stories really touched me. The first, “A Temporary Matter”, is about a couple whose baby was born dead, and who now have to deal with their grief and with the increasing distance that separates them. When they get a letter warning them that the power will be cut between 8 and 9pm for a week due to some repair work, they begin to use that hour of darkness to tell each other things they had been holding back, and thus to regain some of their lost intimacy. The story ends with revelations that change things forever, and it made me feel such loss on behalf of the characters. It did what the best fiction does – it put me temporarily in the skin of another.

In “Sexy”, a young American woman named Miranda is having an affair with a married Indian man named Dev. We experience all the longing, bittersweetness and ambiguity of her situation along with her, until, when babysitting a young Indian boy, she is told what the word “sexy” means to a child, and consequentially begins to see her relationship in a different light.

“Mrs. Sen's” is a story about homesickness and displacement. Through the perspective of an eleven-year-old boy named Eliot, we witness Mrs Sen’s struggle to adjust to a way of life that is different from everything she has ever known.

The last story, “The Third and Final Continent”, is about growing intimacy and finding a place to call home. The protagonist leaves India for England and then for America. Before going to America, he gets married. The marriage is arranged by his and his bride’s families, and his wife is to join him in American when her papers are ready. In the meantime, he rents a room at Mrs. Croft’s house, and is very surprised to learn that his landlady is 103 years old. It is in the presence of his elderly lady that he and his wife begin to overcome the awkwardness of being two strangers married to each other, and to truly become a couple.

Jhumpa Lahiri is clearly a writer of great perception, and of equally great precision. Nothing in her stories is overstated, and her wording is always exactly right. What really won me over, though, was how superb her characterization is. All her characters are painfully human. Interpreter of Maladies is well worth reading.

Interpreter of Maladies - Laura's Review

Interpreter of Maladies
Jhumpa Lahiri
193 pages

Reflections: This beautifully-written collection of short stories portrays various “maladies” of the human condition, such as loss, loneliness, and isolation. As the title suggests, Lahiri interprets these maladies for her readers. And she is absolutely brilliant. The emotions raised by each story are so profound, and so deep, that you can't help but feel them at the core of your own being. As with any collection, a few stories stood out:

• A Temporary Matter – A couple mourns the loss of a stillborn baby, and begins sharing secrets with one another during a power outage. Their grief, and the void between them, is palpable.
• Sexy – Miranda, an American woman, has an affair with a married Indian man. At the same time, her office mate consoles her cousin in India, whose husband has left her for a young English woman. Miranda meets the cousin on a visit to the US and, while babysitting her son, has a revelation about her own romantic relationship.
• Mrs. Sen’s – An Indian woman has recently arrived in the US, and provides after-school care for a boy while her husband teaches at a local university. She is isolated and lonely, is afraid to drive a car, and longs for friends and comforts of home.
• The Third and Final Continent – A young man, educated in London, comes to the US to work at a university. He is recently married, and waiting for his wife’s immigration papers to be processed so she can join him. For six weeks he rents a room from Mrs. Croft, a 103-year-old woman whose daughter visits once a week to deliver food. He contemplates the woman’s infirmity and isolation, as well as his own emotional uncertainty about life as a married man.

After each of these stories, I had to set this book aside and allow the feelings to wash over and through me. Despite this, it was difficult to put down and even more difficult to let go of when finished. A wonderful book, and very deserving of the Pulitzer Prize. ( )

My original review can be found here.