A collection of short stories, about people on either side of the Indian diaspora. The writing is deceptively straightforward, with occasional flashes of artistry, almost as if Lahiri couldn’t help throwing in a gorgeous moment of description, just to show she could. It works really well. Her characters don’t really talk about their feelings in any kind of depth, but their feelings suffuse the stories, emotions seething in the unsaid. Indian immigrants come to the US and deal with the differences as best they can, sometimes finding community and sometimes not; Indian-Americans visit India and the locals wonder at their strangeness. Really nice collection, superb switching of cultural viewpoints from story to story.