> > has anyone read jhumpa lahiri's latest book yet? > It's beautiful storytelling. Her literary idols are Alice Munro and William Trevor, and if you're a fan of those two -- I am! -- you'll enjoy her work. The only small grouse I had at times was that she wasn't subtle enough in parts. She's "show-not-tell" all right, but sometimes she shows too much. This is a very minor quibble, and it's probably a personal oddity that I feel this way: she's a consummate storyteller, with hardly a word out of place, and unlike so many other India-writers -in-English, she doesn't let the storyteller overwhelm the storytelling. Superb book.
The criticism that all her stories are about Bengali immigrants in the US is a pointless one. As she pointed out in an interview, writers like Updike and Munro all write about similar small groups of people -- but they make their stories universal by capturing the human condition, and in my view, Lahiri does as well. -- Amit Varma http://www.indiauncut.com
