Unaccustomed Earth, by Jhumpa Lahiri

      Back in May, I read an article in Time magazine about a best-selling, Pulitzer Prize-winning author, intrigued by the fact that apparently every reader in the U.S. must have heard of her--except for me. The article included the words, "How did Jhumpa Lahiri's Unaccustomed Earth, a book of short stories about Bengali immigrants, become a no. 1 best seller?...Among the things you will not find in Jhumpa Lahiri's fiction are: humor, suspense, cleverness, profound observations about life, vocabulary above the 10th-grade level... It is debatable whether her keyboard even has an exclamation point on it." Wondering if the critical acclaim and widespread readership were merited, I put my name on the waiting list.

     I agree--these quiet stories are absorbing. I quickly came to care about the characters and to find the book hard to put down.

     I know that many of our library's fiction readers avoid short stories, but these are longer than most--eight of them in 333 pages--and the last three stories are linked, making them almost like a short novel. And, if you just don't want to read short stories, try Lahiri's novel The Namesake, a New York Times Notable Book--and get onto the waiting list for it right behind me!

(Helen Snow, Information Services)