Summer Book Club Fun!

A rather animated discussion ensued.  Book club participants were intrigued by the numerous themes present in her work, including an underlying sadness and disappointment, unrequited love, and tensions between parents and siblings often evoked by Bengali parents coping with Americanized children.  Although her stories were particular to the Bengali culture in America, many of her stories and themes seemed universal as well. A staff member from Ukraine/Russia said she could easily relate to the stories and found support and comfort through the shared experiences of immigrating to a new country and raising children within a different culture. There was unanimous appreciation for the beauty of the author’s prose and her expertise in capturing everyday life. 

The book sounds like a great read. Here is a review from Publisher's Weekly.

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. The gulf that separates expatriate Bengali parents from their American-raised children—and that separates the children from India—remains Lahiri's subject for this follow-up to Interpreter of Maladies and The Namesake. In this set of eight stories, the results are again stunning. In the title story, Brooklyn-to-Seattle transplant Ruma frets about a presumed obligation to bring her widower father into her home, a stressful decision taken out of her hands by his unexpected independence. The alcoholism of Rahul is described by his elder sister, Sudha; her disappointment and bewilderment pack a particularly powerful punch. And in the loosely linked trio of stories closing the collection, the lives of Hema and Kaushik intersect over the years, first in 1974 when she is six and he is nine; then a few years later when, at 13, she swoons at the now-handsome 16-year-old teen's reappearance; and again in Italy, when she is a 37-year-old academic about to enter an arranged marriage, and he is a 40-year-old photojournalist. An inchoate grief for mothers lost at different stages of life enters many tales and, as the book progresses, takes on enormous resonance. Lahiri's stories of exile, identity, disappointment and maturation evince a spare and subtle mastery that has few contemporary equals. (Apr.)  Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.