The Lowland

Best. Birthday present. Ever.

Thanks, Francisco.

I didn't like it at first--the pace of Jhumpa Lahiri's latest novel is uneven and the point of view and focus of the story changes frequently. It's actually sort of post-modern in that sense, I think: the story analyzes the growth and fragmentation of the family in a style that is both organic and fragmented.

There are two brothers, Subhash and Udayan, their wife, Guari, and daughter, Bela. The story follows the lives of the family and the splintering of the family over Subhash's lifetime. There's romance and politics (Udayan is a revolutionary in India in the 70s, suppressed by India's government). It's psychologically interesting and not at all a pretty, happy, positive book. It can't help but compare India and America, revolution and conservatism, engagement and withdrawal, family and individualism.

The relationship between the two brothers is close and transcends death; the younger is more daring than the older, more political, more innovative. The title refers to two ponds near Subhash and Udayan's childhood home that sometimes merge and sometimes separate, like the brothers themselves. The story traces this merging and this separation through their lives and death.

Here's a random quote--Lahiri writing about Subhash's visit to a New England village: "A few months later Subhash also traveled to a village; this was the word the Americans used. An old-fashioned word, designating an early settlement, a humble place. And yet the village had once contained a civilization: a church, a courthouse, a tavern, a jail." It is the growth and changes in both families and civilizations that Lahiri attends to.

(Also: Unaccustomed Earth, Interpreter of Maladies, and The Namesake)