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.
Tag: genre-gen fiction
The Sweetest Remedy, by Jane Igharo
This is a perfectly sweet and romantic story about finding one’s family, except one’s family turns out to be super rich in Nigeria. It actually felt so close to Crazy Rich Asians for me, with its fish-out-of-water American heroine, her total delight in native dishes, the aloof and snobbish natives, and their breathless name-dropping of brands and designers, that I kept imagining it all taking place in Singapore. The main character is a half-white, half-Nigerian girl who grew up with her mother in the US after her Nigerian father left them; when she gets word that he has passed away and has asked for her to be present for the will to be read, she reluctantly travels to Nigeria. There, she meets her ultra-rich, mostly-unimpressed family, falls in love with a super hot family friend, and they all have to learn to accept each other. So yeah, pretty much it’s the plot of Crazy Rich Asians, except with only a fraction of the sniping and backbiting. The characters have no depth; everyone is pretty much exactly who they say they are, and they also say exactly what they think at any given moment. Everyone emotes so much that you feel like you’re reading a telenovela. The writing wasn’t artful by any means, but it was simple and smooth, and there were no surprises.
Secret Daughter, by Shilpi Somaya Gowda
A poor woman in 1980s India is forced to give up her daughter (because they need sons, obv); a pair of California doctors struggling with infertility adopts that baby girl from the husband’s native Mumbai. The story follows both families as the girl grows; the Indian family struggles to make a living in Mumbai; the California couple deals with internal stress caused by culture clash and teen rebellion. The Indian culture and food, from the point of view of the expat doctor dad and the teenage American girl, were lovingly portrayed; the white mom’s horror of spicy food was a little stereotypical, but whatever. Easy writing with moments of genuine feeling, especially around parenthood, but mostly the story felt very staged and superficial throughout, the characters more paper cutouts than real people.
A Gentleman in Moscow, by Amor Towles
I loved this book so much. A gentleman is sentenced to lifetime house arrest by a Bolshevik tribunal; his house arrest is to be in the grand Metropol hotel. The main character is everything you want in a storybook gentleman: urbane, sympathetic, and clever; the tone of the book is pleasant but also insightful. Every page was a delight to read, the characters were really well developed, the hotel is painted so beautifully that I really would love to visit someday, and you get a beautiful overview of the first few decades of the Soviet Union.
Sharks in the Time of Saviors, by Kawai Strong Washburn
A good read but a tough one, mostly because there’s no easy way out of racism and generational poverty, even when you’ve been touched by Hawaiian legends. As a child, Nainoa falls into the water and is magically rescued by sharks; he comes out of the experience bearing supernatural gifts that he cannot quite figure out how to use. His siblings, each with their own strengths and weaknesses, also struggle to make their own way in his shadow. The book is brilliantly written, each viewpoint distinct, and the overall work just seethes with pent-up frustration and thwarted ambition, alongside gorgeous descriptions of Hawaiian landscape. It’s amazing.
Pumpkin Heads, by Rainbow Rowell and Faith Erin Hicks
Super light and super cute, as sticky and sweet as a PSL. Friends who work a seasonal gig at a pumpkin patch try to drink in as much autumn joy as possible before saying goodbye to this stage of their lives. Full of the poignant endings of leaving high school and going to college. Love the characters’ unbridled joy in all things fall, and their unhesitating support for one another.
What Strange Paradise, by Omar El Akkad
Do you remember Alan Kurdi, that poor Syrian kid who washed ashore on the Turkish coast? Do you remember mourning over the image of his poor little body, his parents’ dashed dreams, the tragic waste of his life? And then you turned away, right, because you have your own sanity to think about, and your own life to live? Well, Omar El Akkad does not want you to turn away. He wants you to consider Alan and his journey, even as you read about a boy who could have escaped the same fate. The book begins with bodies strewn on a beach, another wreckage of refugee dreams… but then a child stumbles to his feet and races away from the pursuing authorities. The story follows refugee child Amir as, in the past, he gets aboard a rickety boat sailing into the unknown; and, in the present, as he bonds with teenager Vanna despite their lack of common language, while she does her best to keep him safe. El Akkad mercilessly gives humanity to people on the boat that you know are doomed; likewise mercilessly, he shows you how the rest of the world goes about their holiday lives, closing their eyes to human desperation as it washes up on their shores.
Queenie, by Candice Carty-Williams
OK, if I have a genre type, then a book about a Jamaican-British 25-year-old trying to find love and confidence in London is… not generally that type. But Queenie’s experience of being too exotic for London, and too modern for her first-generation Jamaican grandparents, had a very familiar immigrant culture clash feeling for me. The author was unsparing in showing how people throughout various levels of society worked to hypersexualize and objectify Queenie, and how hard it was for her to separate her expectations for herself from those extremely negative expectations and experiences. Two things kept the book from being completely disturbing and grim: Queenie’s internal narrative voice, which remained strong throughout; and Queenie’s friends, who were a constant delight; their group chat interludes were some of my favorite parts of the book. There is some super strong social commentary in the background of this book too; the news from America includes George Floyd and BLM, and the various reactions of the characters say so much.
The Lost Apothecary, by Sarah Penner
If one suspends all disbelief, particularly involving the process of getting into grad school, or the possibility of stumbling on an untouched hundreds-year-old dwelling in urban London, not to mention a main character whose entire past was defined by vague obliviousness but who can suddenly develop piercing insight within just a few pages… then this book will be a lovely story of a woman finally finding her strength and pursuing her own dreams! (All that aside, my very least favorite part was the narrator’s blithe assertion that getting married and getting a boring desk job meant that she had to put away all her books, because that lifestyle meant that she couldn’t read any more. Hello? What?!)
Horse Heaven, by Jane Smiley
Horse Heaven by Jane Smiley (recommended by KS) turned out to be a really leisurely, sprawling epic following a group of racehorses through their various owners and trainers, and incidentally also the lives of said owners and trainers, and I enjoyed it way more than I initially thought I would. Both humans and horses are given depth and personality, and although the cast of characters is big, I was able to follow the action without problems.