Interpreter Of Maladies

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Interpreter Of Maladies

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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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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

Customer Reviews:

Rating:
Date: 2008-07-02
An eternally exquisite collection
I feel privileged to have read Ms. Lahiri's collection of stories which place me so firmly within the imagined and real aspects both of the world she delineates so beautifully. In an age where so many authors seem to think it's OK to muddy the waters of their work with lame pop culture references and dragging, trendy dialogue, 'Interpreter of Maladies' is almost as refined and restrained as a nineteenth-century work of literary art.

Rating:
Date: 2008-06-18
Mending and Blending Cultural Mores.....
The beautifully crafted tales in the INTERPRETER OF MALADIES by Jhumpa Lahiri are easily embraced and full of genuine empathy..

The collection of richly elegant stories all deal with the lives of Indian emigrants in the New World as they cope with their culture's strict traditional beliefs.

Ms. Lahiri's writing is a soft suggestive prose style that speaks to the reader stirringly.
The descriptions are so clear that the reader's senses awaken to the sounds, smells, and bright colors of rich eastern intrigue and heritage.

Rating:
Date: 2008-06-03
Excellent Reading!
Jhumpa Lahiri is an enthralling story teller. The short stories are riveting and gives you a keen sense of the emotions felt by each character in the stories. I read this in one weekend which is hard to do as a mom of 4-yr old twins working fulltime... I simply couldn't tear myself away from the pages. The ease with which she writes and depicts each character is superb....
Highly recommend this book to anyone as I do her other books.

Rating:
Date: 2008-05-29
Human stories about Human Beings
Ms Lahari uses language so simple and direct that I sometimes felt like I'd been hit with a blunt object! Her central characters may be Bengali, but their situations feel so universal to me - the wandering husband having an affair; the tense politeness and resignation of two people in an arranged marriage (which is still the norm in much of the world); the wild imaginings of a young child; the ability of small children to speak the truth in a way that adults never can; the way the world can be so very cruel to people who are simply trying their best...

At times, I felt almost like a voyeur, witnessing intensely personal snippets of people's lives, then having to move on without know what happened afterward. Oooh, I love books that leave me thinking!

Rating:
Date: 2008-05-28
A good book about charming characters in slightly heartbreaking stories.
I read this book on my sister's recommendation; it is not a book that would have ever been on my radar otherwise. Hopefully now my recommendation will put it on your radar, assuming it's not already there. This was a very good book.

This book is a series of short stories and each is worth reading. The stories feature Indian-Americans in diverse circumstances. It is safe to say that the main commonality, other than ancestry, was that each story was beautifully written, though a little heartbreaking. If you can deal with "a little heartbreaking," you are in for a treat.

I loved the characters, both main and supporting. Some seemed like stereotypes, others unique in their ability to understood things the rest of us will never comprehend. All of them were given great depth, in only a few pages.

I have had a few mediocre experiences with short stories by other authors, but the stories in Interpreter of Maladies have given me great hope that there are more out there that won't let me down.

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