I read interpreter of maladies also by Jhumpa Lahiri at the suggestion of my dear Beth and then also at her suggestion I picked up this on in CD to listen to in the car on my very long trip to and from school.
My review will be on the work but also on the quality for the book on cd. I wasn't one for listening to books very much. In the past the exception was the Harry Potter series which for about 2 years my kids insisted on listening to every time we got in the car and so we heard the entire series about 4 times. But I think I have been converted, at least for long car trips such as my trek back and forth from home to school.
Like interpreter of maladies, Unaccustomed Earth is a collection of short stories. One of the amazing things I find with these is that while the stories pick up at a moment in the life of the characters, give us a glimpse into a set of events, and then we leave them. There isn't an ending in the traditional sense. The ending we get isn't meant to be a clean wrap up, there's no "and they lived happily ever after" only a sense of "oh please tell me more". Lahiri does this so well it is both breathtaking and heartbreaking. She also takes what can plain, even ugly words (like flaccid for example) and strings them together and makes them brilliant and amazing.
The cd experience was very interesting. The readers, one male and one female, both very good with the Indian accent and pronouncing words (names and cities) that I might have stumbled across. They were very good at reading with emotion and not using a flat tone and so inserting life into the words. It was over too soon and I am sad to say goodbye to this one.
(finished September 18, 2013)
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