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Holistic Guidance - Interpreter of Maladies
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List Price: $13.95
Our Price: $11.16
Your Save: $ 2.79 ( 20% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Mariner Books
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780395927205
ISBN: 039592720X
Label: Mariner Books
Manufacturer: Mariner Books
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 208
Publication Date: 1999-06-01
Publisher: Mariner Books
Studio: Mariner Books
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Editorial Reviews:
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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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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: One of the best books I've ever read
Comment: To give a frame of reference, some of my favorite authors are Margaret Atwood and Barbara Kingsolver. I have searched and searched for another introspective, intelligent, strong female voice, and finally I have found it. I plan on buying every one of her books and keeping them forever. In this book alone, my wisdom cache has increased, certainly the mark of a great book.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Excellent collection of stories
Comment: This is one of the best collections of short stories that I have read. Many of her characters stayed with me long after I finished the book. I also enjoyed "The Namesake" and can't wait to read her latest book.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Lovely stories
Comment: I'm a fan of Lahiri's and enjoyed Namesake as well. Check it out for yourself and I'm sure you will agree. I too am tired of reading stories of the "Indianness" of being Indian. So as an Indian I appreciate this.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Dark and macabre
Comment: The book was very well written, but I found it to be a little too dark and macabre for my tastes - not exactly something you'd want to curl up and sink into...
Customer Rating:
Summary: Some great stories, others not memorable
Comment: I liked most of these stories. The first story, "A Temporary Matter," made me cry and lament a tragic failure of people to communicate and understand one another. The last story, "The Third and Final Continent," was equally moving, and restored my faith that there is innocence in love.
Overall, Lahiri's keen understanding of the nuances of relationships is impressive. In her brief stories, the complicated relationships between the characters are remarkably well-developed. She is equally deft at capturing the nuances of the human personality- her characters often can't be labeled as protagonists or antagonists. Rather, they exist in the same gray moral area as the typical reader.
The main fault I find with this collection, however, is a lack of consistency. It is easy for me to pick out the stories that were extraordinary in the book and, as for the rest, they tend to be somewhat forgettable. To be honest,I was also a bit put off by the sparsity of Lahiri's writing and the absence of figurative language which, for me, is a beautiful and important element of short fiction. Metaphor and other figurative techniques can add, succinctly, a deeper layer of meaning which Lahiri's stories lack somewhat.
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