Okay, I discovered that getting books on CDs adds another strand to my
reading as I can listen to books while I drive or run errands. I just
finished Jhumpa Lahiri's "Interpreter of Maladies" that got a pulitzer
prize a few years back. Just before that, I listened to Junot Diaz
"This Is How You Lose Her".  Even though there seem to be similarities
between the two books: both are written by first-and-a-half generation
immigrants coaching their personal experiences as stories; they are
quite different in style and worldview. Diaz' is a brash
screw-you-world raised-in-the-ghetto medley of registers, styles and
colors. Lahiri's is a polished and crafted professor's-daughter
understatement. However, both are fine examples of modern american
literature and, I think, modern american experience.

Out of Diaz, I still enjoyed his previous short story collection
"Drown" better for its raw power, the tone of despair and desolation
(you know, something to cheer one up). However, this one comes close
second. It is a bit more polished but plumbs similar themes and
experiences. Somehow, the infidelities, longing and loneliness that
are added in a few stories, especially the last one "The Cheater's
Guide to Love" also resonated with me.

Lahiri's prose is smoother. Yet, the stories are uneven in its
significance.  I liked the first one, "A Temporary Matter", the best.
Then, the rest of the stories petered out somewhat. The title story,
"the Interpreter of Maladies", smacks of Arundhati Roy's made-up
personal drama grafted onto exotic landscape."The Blessed House" goes
nowhere. "The Treatment of Bibi Haldar" is suddenly endearing. The last
one, "the third and final continent" is a travelogue. It starts out
with ever-so-trite tropes of a foreigner coming to the US (can you
imagine? They drive on the wrong side, say that line is "busy" instead
of "engaged" and call a "lift" an "elevator"). It then turns to a
rather refreshing narrative of the first relationships that bind
Jhumpa's character-stand-in-for-her-father to the new country and then
slides back to familiar
I-got-used-to-this-country-despite-its-queer-customs.