Jhumpa Lahiri, Unaccustomed Earth (Vintage)Read about the other entries on the list.
Family life and the tangle of love and obligation are at the center of this short story collection which Kirkus called “some of [Lahiri’s] most compelling fiction.” In the title story, a father visits his daughter’s new home in Seattle; in “Hell-Heaven,” a graduate student attends a Thanksgiving party of the family who first welcomed him to the United States; “Only Goodness” follows a shifting sibling relationship. As Simon Han has pointed out, in the three final linked stories where two childhood acquaintances write to each other over a period of years, the passing Christmases orient them in space and time and force them to take stock of the changes in their lives. When better than the holidays to think about what you have and what you’ve lost?
--Marshal Zeringue
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