Book Review - Unaccustomed Earth

Jhumpa Lahiri through her "Unaccustomed Earth" again takes you through the nuances of human feelings. Even though there is a tinge of melancholy in all the stories, I enjoyed the candid expression of human feelings. Irrespective of whether it is a father and daughter relationship or it is the equation between room mates the distances are properly portrayed without any compromise. If i were to summarise "Everyone in this world are alone" ;-)
All the stories involve Bengali families - but that does not really mean that there are lots of references to Bengali customs. All of them have relocated to the US at some point - a context that i think the author is familiar and finds it easy to paint her characters on. I liked the structure of the book - it has a few standalone short stories and some that are connected, almost like a short novel.
Jhumpa Lahiri is a wonderful story teller whose characters appealed to me more than the setting of the story. There is just enough mention of the surroundings, weather etc without distracting the focus on the people involved. At the end, you have a feeling of having met these characters or having conversed with them sometime. They might even be one of your friends and it is this familiarity that will make them very endearing.
Try reading this book - and let me know if you dont agree with me. I can only learn from different perpectives.