| Interpreter of Maladies: Stories of Bengal, Boston and Beyond |  | Author: Jhumpa Lahiri
Publisher: HarperCollins
Category: Book
List Price: $16.50
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Rating:  469 reviews
Sales Rank: 2245370
Media: Paperback
Pages: 198
ISBN: 817223502X
EAN: 9788172235024
ASIN: 817223502X
Publication Date: 1999
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: as featured pages clean may exhibit some shelf wear exceptions are noted
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Amazon.com Review
Mr. Kapasi, the protagonist of Jhumpa Lahiri's title story, would certainly have his work cut out for him if he were forced to interpret the maladies of all the characters in this eloquent debut collection. Take, for example, Shoba and Shukumar, the young couple in "A Temporary Matter" whose marriage is crumbling in the wake of a stillborn child. Or Miranda in "Sexy," who is involved in a hopeless affair with a married man. But Mr. Kapasi has problems enough of his own; in addition to his regular job working as an interpreter for a doctor who does not speak his patients' language, he also drives tourists to local sites of interest. His fare on this particular day is Mr. and Mrs. Das--first-generation Americans of Indian descent--and their children. During the course of the afternoon, Mr. Kapasi becomes enamored of Mrs. Das and then becomes her unwilling confidant when she reads too much into his profession. "I told you because of your talents," she informs him after divulging a startling secret. I'm tired of feeling so terrible all the time. Eight years, Mr. Kapasi, I've been in pain eight years. I was hoping you could help me feel better; say the right thing. Suggest some kind of remedy. Of course, Mr. Kapasi has no cure for what ails Mrs. Das--or himself. Lahiri's subtle, bittersweet ending is characteristic of the collection as a whole. Some of these nine tales are set in India, others in the United States, and most concern characters of Indian heritage. Yet the situations Lahiri's people face, from unhappy marriages to civil war, transcend ethnicity. As the narrator of the last story, "The Third and Final Continent," comments: "There are times I am bewildered by each mile I have traveled, each meal I have eaten, each person I have known, each room in which I have slept." In that single line Jhumpa Lahiri sums up a universal experience, one that applies to all who have grown up, left home, fallen in or out of love, and, above all, experienced what it means to be a foreigner, even within one's own family. --Alix Wilber
Product Description
Navigating between the Indian traditions they've inherited and the baffling new world, the characters in Jhumpa Lahiri's elegant, touching stories seek love beyond the barriers of culture and generations. In "A Temporary Matter," published in The New Yorker, a young Indian-American couple faces the heartbreak of a stillborn birth while their Boston neighborhood copes with a nightly blackout. In the title story, an interpreter guides an American family through the India of their ancestors and hears an astonishing confession. Lahiri writes with deft cultural insight reminiscent of Anita Desai and a nuanced depth that recalls Mavis Gallant. She is an important and powerful new voice.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 464 more reviews...
 Character-Rich Stories January 8, 2009
Michele Cozzens (Cloud 8)
This collection of nine stories was the choice for our January book club. Jhumpa Lahiri is a talented storyteller and the topic of "maladies," which is woven through each tale, made for interesting discussion. The stories are character-rich and are set in both India and the Eastern Seaboard of the United States. Regardless of the setting, Lahiri's description is filled with minute, sensory-oriented detail. The characters become three dimensional as they share what humors and ails them. All are quite memorable, making each story stand out as an individual accomplishment.
I enjoyed all nine, but among my favorites was "Blessed House," about a young Indian couple in a new home. They find what seems to be an endless stash of Christian artifacts and these statues, icons and effigies tickle the wife, Twinkle, and horrify the husband, Sanjeev. I also loved the final story, "The Third and Final Continent," told by a Bengali man who left India (Asia) in 1964, went first to London (Europe) and then Boston (North America) where he began is new life and faced his ultimate destination. What stands out most about this story is his experience with the 103 year-old landlady, Mrs. Croft, with whom he lived for several weeks prior to his wife's arrival. It teaches him a lot about relationships, particularly the relationship that becomes most important to him. Simply "splendid!"
Highly recommend for both excellent writing and outstanding storytelling.
 Book is great, but CD awful! January 8, 2009
W. Thomas
This review is for the CD (audio) version of Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri. I actually liked the writing and stories, but the reader, Matilda Novak, was terrible for this work. She may be excellent for other books that need a perky and cheerful white woman, but it was a mistake to choose her for this book. It really ruins an otherwise good piece of writing.
What made it especially difficult for me was that I had just listened to Lahiri's more recent work, Unaccustomed Earth, read by Sarita Choudhury & Ajay Naidu. Not only is Unaccustomed Earth an excellent collection of stories, but Choudhury & Naidu become the characters in these stories and significantly enhance the book. They are a perfect fit for Lahiri's stories. I was really impressed and was looking forward to more of the same in Interpreter of Maladies. Big disappointment!
Living Character December 28, 2008
Mohammad I. Kabir (Perth, Australia)
Interpreter of Maladies
As I read the book I begin to discover myself in many of the characters.
This is obviously the power of the writing. It is a difficult task particularly when a writer portrays the character of an opposite sex. It makes me wonder though: Is the author a woman who in a previous life was a man or am I a man who in a previous life was a woman. Or, am I a character brought to life that would disappear when the reading is finished?
 Simple/Subtle/Powerful December 7, 2008
Kenny of LA (Los Angeles, USA)
One of the reviews of this book called the stories, "bland." I prefer to think of them as "subtle." To make a food analogy, these stories are each lovely, lightly, but delicately spiced, appetizers. Each story presents its characters in a straightforward, clear and precise manner, with little inserted point of view; thus, allowing the reader to deeply feel the thoughts and emotions of each character. I was particularly moved by This Blessed House, which tells the story of Sanjeev and Twinkle, newlyweds (he from India, she a first generation American of Indian parents) coming to terms with the differences that each brings to the marriage. I thought the truths in this story were universal, and quite beautifully presented.
On the other hand, I felt that a few of the stories lacked sufficient substance to truly draw me in and hook me.
Overall however, a good book for a weekend.
The Race Novel as a new genre or can I just call it Starbucks Lit? December 3, 2008
Pristine Angie at www.d332.com (NYC)
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
I had been practicing speed reading over the course of a few books. Simultaneously reading Dickens's "David Copperfield" and Solzhenitsyn's "Gulag Archipelago," there were moments in those books when my pace halted to a screech in the presence of a crystalline line. With Lahiri's book, I decided I could take my time with such a slim volume, after all Raymond Carver (and Gordon Lish) were able to pack so much punch into 2-3 pages. Remarkably, I trudged from one paragraph to another in Lahiri's book, impoverished of any moments of wonder. I did stop to reread certain paragraphs, attempting to discover why the author often needed to include (or pad) in her prose, several lines that did not add in any way - rhythmically, cadence-wise, or symbolically - to the story. There's barely a trace of a narrative voice as one dry sentence after another gets dispatched like an instruction manual on technical writing. And that's when I came to this conclusion:
The book is written in the style of a generic YA (young adult) novel. Short, simple sentences that often have a few minor phrases made mysterious depending only on how hard a reader attempts to "read" into it. I do like an oblique method of storytelling and oftentimes, the meaning is hidden in simplicity, but when you have to strain your interpretive imagination to read into the textbook-like sentences of banal details (to the point where your mind is running wild at the reasons why superfluous sentences were added ), it seems like a work that is only half done.
It's no surprise Amy Tan's praises were featured in the back of the bookcover. As an expat myself, I have often noticed there are many Westerners who feel comfortable with discussing only things connected to my race. Regardless of how much authentic geographic connection you have to your race, as long as you talk about, elaborate on, and discuss your non-Western culture, then not only is your identity easily recognizable, you can sustain a level of safe fascination.
In this manner, Lahiri's stories are unceasing in their insistent on an Indian identity, continually reaffirming a sense of exoticism that has always been a cash cow to non-white writers. Since Lahiri was born in London, then moved to Rhode Island, USA, I find it puzzling that she continues, to this day, to bank on an immigrant Indian status. I am not a fan of the Diaspora lit genre that made Amy Tan famous; it seems authors in this genre feel a calling to pretensions of "keeping it real" by staying within the confines of an identity that caters to the feel-good plurality of readers in the West.
Don't get me wrong, I am thrilled whenever non-Western writers enter the canon of dead white male authors. I rushed out to get my copy of Moth Smoke when it came out and Satanic Verses remains one of my all-time beloved novels. Lahiri's success may encourage following generations of Western non-white writers to emulate her path to success by writing about their race AS their sole identity. Other writers will explore and go to bold new places where many writers have yet to discover, but non-white authors will stagnate in the only place they are *allowed* to succeed. And they don't even have to be good at it. The fact that Pulitzer patronizes this piece of work should not fool the more astute in the public. It conditions and confines up-and-coming non-white writers to work in a style that is mediocre, protected only by the kidgloves of political correctness.
The most telling story in Interpreter of Maladies is a story of the same title. An American-born Indian woman, vacationing in India with her husband, utilizes the services of an Indian tour guide who also acts as an interpreter for Indian patients at a local doctor's office. She incorrectly exotifies this interpreter as a simulacrum for a real doctor, and proceeds to confide her infidelity to him. Not only does the interpreter understand that she, as an American Indian woman, has the luxury and mobility to enter and leave the Indian culture as a commodity, but when her attempts to find a cure from him meet with failure, she inadvertently discards him.
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