Interpreter Of Maladies
SynopsisPlot
A blackout forces a young Indian American couple to make confessions that unravel their tattered domestic peace. An Indian American girl recognizes her cultural identity during a Halloween celebration while the Pakastani civil war rages on television in the background. A latchkey kid with a single working mother finds affinity with a woman from Calcutta. In the title story, an interpreter guides an American family through the India of their ancestors and hears an astonishing confession.
Story
About this book
Jhumpa Lahiri gathers nine stories in this book, each following Indian or Indian American characters who live at some distance from where they began. Settings move between Calcutta and suburban America. A couple exchanges confessions during nightly power outages. A young girl watches a family friend follow news of the conflict in East Pakistan while his own relatives remain caught in it. A boy spending afternoons with his Indian babysitter notices her loneliness and her longing for home.
Several stories turn on small encounters that reveal wider strains. In the title story, a tour guide in India drives an Indian American family through the region of their ancestry and becomes the listener for an unexpected disclosure. Elsewhere, newlyweds argue over Christian figurines left in their new house. A sweeper in a Calcutta apartment building loses her place once the residents decide to modernize.
Most of the action happens in kitchens, cars, rented rooms and other ordinary spaces, where the pressure builds through restrained detail. The characters seldom belong wholly to one country, and much of the tension sits in the space between what they say and what they keep back.
