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    Interpreter of Maladies
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    Interpreter of Maladies
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    Interpreter of Maladies
    Ebook228 pages3 hours

    Interpreter of Maladies

    By Jhumpa Lahiri

    4/5

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    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateMar 27, 2014
    ISBN9780007381647
    Author

    Jhumpa Lahiri

    Jhumpa Lahiri has been a Fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts, but is currently teaching in New York. She has published her fiction in various US journals including the New Yorker, and has won several US prizes for her work.

    Read more from Jhumpa Lahiri

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    Reviews for Interpreter of Maladies

    4/5

    3,038 ratings141 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Some of the stories are poignant...maybe a bit too much so, but in the end the stories work together to form a whole...no news, as it's won a Pulitzer....
    • 3/5
      Larhiri's short stories take place either in the Boston area or in India. Most of them are melancholy. I liked them, but they didn't blow me away, just made me a little sad. The narrator seemed unfamiliar with the pronunciation of place names like Filene's and Mapparium. No problem with Nickelodeon though (I'd almost forgotten about that place!)
    • 5/5
      These short stories are mainly set in America, but sometimes in India, and feature mostly Indian-Americans, but sometimes Indians. I found them moving and gentle, although fairly sad. They made me want to try mustard oil!
    • 4/5
      Excellent collection of stories characterizing the lives of Indian and Indian-Americans who try to make their world work despite living at times in conflicting worlds. I was particularly fond of Mr. Pirzada, the charming misfit who touched a young girl's heart by reaching out to her in a simple, sweet, old-fashioned fashion. Reminded me of my Danish great-uncle who I loved dearly as much because of his quirks as anything else.
    • 5/5
      An amazing collection of short stories. A good read on your own, or with a book club. I wanted several of the stories to be novels.
    • 4/5
      I really appreciated all of the short stories in this book. Definitely gave me some knowledge and insight into a culture I am otherwise mostly ignorant of. I will be looking to learn more. As for the writing, I loved the ordinary observations Lahiri wove into the overall theme of each chapter/the book. Great read.
    • 4/5
      Interpreter of Maladies is a collection of short stories dealing with Indian-Americans for the most part. A few stories take place in India, but most are placed in New England. They relate the immigrant experience, the dislocation felt by those born in another country and by those born here visiting back in India. There's different views on raising children, marriage (both arranged and otherwise), and dealing with differences between the sexes. The stories are well-written and, as with all collections, some stand out better than others depending on the reader. I enjoyed A Temporary Matter and Interpreter of Maladies the most, but all of the stories were enjoyable.
    • 4/5
      This is a finely written collection of stories, all of which have at least some characters in or from India. With one exception, all of the "Indian" characters interact with others outside their cultural background, and even the one exception to that involves an individual Indian "outsider" within her own Indian society. The author has a clean, personable style that keeps one's interest, without offering much of real excitement. The stories deal with "normal" life with various mixed cultural differences, which, in the end, emphasize more individual human differences, somewhat camouflaged by and mistaken for the cultural ones.
    • 3/5
      Writes well but only three stories really do it for me - probably the content rather than the writing. In the other tales many of the characters do not have an internal logic. They come across (to me at any rate) as stupid, selfish, unaware. The stories that I like give the characters an internal logic for their actions - in the others characters come across as patronised by the author, or perhaps stereotypes. The ones I really like are:
      Sexy
      Mrs Sen's
      The Third and Final Continent
      (plus an honourable mention for This Blessed House)
      Interesting that all these are in the latter half of the book.....
    • 5/5
      The stories, on the surface, are simple storytelling, but breathtakingly beautiful at the same time. It is an extremely talented author that can take short vignettes about regular people, and make it so authentic and beautiful.
    • 2/5
      I was very disappointed with this collection of short stories. I went into this thinking that as a Pulitzer Prize Winner, this had to be a book I would enjoy. I was very wrong. While the author is obviously a skilled writer, I was not blown away by the writing style. With maybe one exception, the stories were all depressing and left me feeling sad or apathetic toward the characters. I felt like many of them were left without a resolution, and I wanted more closure. My guess is that these stories were written in this way on purpose, but I found the read very unsatisfying.
    • 5/5
      Beautiful inspiring book!
    • 5/5
      Memorable - stories all with gentle vivid portrayals; indelible, yet all so sad.Finely drawn insights into many characters capture our imaginations and makeus want each of them, like Mr. Kapesi, to have their innocent happiness.Despite too much fish, I loved Mr. and Mrs. Sen and wish that the young man had returned to visit them...fine start for a novel!
    • 4/5
      As a group we enjoyed the short story format as a break from the larger novel. Lahiri's work is gentle, intimate with pedestrian tableaus so beautifully expressed. We all had a favorite and had to take issue with a couple of the characters, but the themes of love and being foreign are elegantly connected.
    • 4/5
      Amazon already shows over a thousand reviews of this Pulitzer Prize winner, overwhelmingly positive. One more positive review seems superfluous, so I'll just say that, while I did enjoy the stories in INTERPRETER OF MALADIES (a favorite was "Sexy"), I've read three of her other books (THE NAMESAKE, THE LOWLAND and UNACCUSTOMED EARTH) which I liked more than this one. But it'a all relative, a matter of degree. Jhumpa Lahiri is an incredibly talented writer who will remain a particular favorite. Very highly recommended. - Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER
    • 5/5
      Pulitzer winner.
    • 4/5
      This is a lovely collection of stories, that are mostly from the third-person, but have two that are from the first person. The overriding theme is seperation and the inability of people to understand each other - whether it is a bewildered immigrant, a husband and wife, a young boy and his divorcing parents, etc. It is melancholy, with personal tragedies, but it is well-written and compelling, and you feel for each character, who are made distinct from those in the other story, though you can tell they inhabit the same universe.
    • 5/5
      Absolutely wonderful.
    • 5/5
      Ingenious, moving, hilarious, painful, amusing: these stories surprise in their variety. I especially liked Sexy because of the ingenious way the author confronted the main person with the consequences of her deeds. This Blessed House is a really funny story, completely different from the others. The characters in the stories are always real and intriguing.
    • 3/5
      Meh. Well written but with nothing to say. A compilation of nine short stories, all along the same theme - which is anachronistic snapshots of lives of Indian/Bangladeshi immigrants from 50ish years ago. There's no date given, but I can't see any of the western lives being lived any later than the 70s. There's a mix of immigration from Bangladesh to India, and from and to India and the US. AT no point doe sit seem relevant. Neither does anything happen at any point, to anyone. Careful character portraits are fine and it is quite a skilled writing set to capture them. But if you don't use them, and they aren't of real people, then why bother. There's a good mix of young and old, male and female, all suffering (and generally not getting to grips with) living in a different place to that which you've accustomed to. But really it's not that hard, it's just different, and unsurprisingly if you don't change to adapt to the culture you've moved to, you'll find life difficult. People don't do it that way at home is not sufficiently fascinating to write stories about - relate real life episodes and moan with friends for sure - but that's not what this is.The best was probably the 2nd story - where a young girl's family hosts a Bangladeshi professor for a few weeks, and she's somewhat confused, and the last - where a young Indian man discovers that american women are older than they look. The title story is particularly poor, based around a mis-interpretation of what a Indian cab driver's other job is. It's very contrived and not at all obvious that this is a mis-understanding anyone could make. They are really all quite similar and blur a bit in to one another.The writing remains elegant and sparse, descriptively capturing people and surroundings but only a little of their emotions and lives. Really just a shame that nothing came of it. An equivalent to the pretentious boring "literature" of women gossiping in a cafe.
    • 5/5
      Very satisfying.
    • 5/5
      Fabulous Read. The descriptions are realistic and she has her own style of developing scenes from description of material aspects.
    • 5/5
      Wonderfully written short stories that explore relationships. Spare but exquisitely crafted.This collection of short stories won the Pullitzer Prize. Lahiri is a great observer of life. While writing with a distinct cultural view, she explores universal themes of grief and connectedness.
    • 5/5
      I very rarely read short stories. This one I read on a recommendation. Wonderful wonderful read. Jhumpa Lahiri is an unbelievably good writer. Highly recommend this book. (On loan from Cindy.)
    • 4/5
      Thanks Uday for recommending this little treasure. I've two stories left - I couldn't put it down last night until my eyes closed on me against my will!

      Ok done. I love that the author helps those of us who haven't the extreme emigration experiences understand a little bit what it's like to be so far from home. At least one character hasn't left her homeland, but even she doesn't fit in because of her mental illness. So, someone like me, raised in green rural northwest Wisconsin and now living in the desert in a small city in Nevada, can empathize and even learn from the experiences of the people in the stories.

      Of course, Lahiri says it ever so much better than I can. So, stop reading reviews and just read this slim gem!
    • 3/5
      While I liked this book for the look into the lives of India Indians--especially those who have moved to the US, many of the stories just didn't make sense in the end. An OK book, but not one that I would recommend.
    • 4/5
      A quick read, easily completed in a weekend. Although I'm not a big fan of short stories, I did enjoy this collection. The stories are all a little sad (as short stories seem destined to be), but no so much that they depressed me. The emotions were bittersweet, not melodramatic. Each story featured Indian food in some capacity, as a symbol of emotional bonding, and I was perpetually craving curry, samosas, and various other dishes described! A nice look at Indian culture from various perspectives.
    • 5/5
      Enjoying the moment, the simple moments that can change ones life is what this book is about. We join a journey where we experience a moment in time, doing something the characters may have done daily or even hourly, yet one day something clicks and a new outlook, a new thought, a new idea sparks and this, a simple moment, arrives and changes a life. Lahiri writes beautifully making me feel those moments that can change one's world.
    • 5/5
      I loved several of these short stories (including the first two, which was what sucked me in!) and found the writing to be beautiful and evocative throughout. Several of them (the titular "Interpreter of Maladies", "A Real Durwan", "Mrs. Sen's") were a bit too bitter/unresolved for me to really *enjoy*, but they have continued to ripple through my thoughts, and I think perhaps I need a bit more time to fully decide how I feel about them. My overall favorites were "This Blessed House" and "The Third and Final Continent."
    • 5/5
      The stories "When Mr. Prizada Came to Dine," "A Real Durwan," "The Treatment of Bibi Haldar," and "The Third and Final Continent" would be most useful in a high school ELA classroom. "When Mr. Prizada Came to Dine" and "The Third and Final Continent" both explore the immigrant experience of Indians in America, while "A Real Durwan" and "The Treatment of Bibi Halder" are set in India and would therefore be useful in exploring Indian culture and societal norms, particularly from the female point of view. "When Mr. Prizada Came to Dine" would fit nicely into a historical perspective approach as it lends itself to exploration of India-Pakistan relations.