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| Interpreter of Maladies | 
 enlarge | Author: Jhumpa Lahiri
Publisher: Flamingo
Category: Book
List Price: £7.99
Buy Used: £0.01
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Avg. Customer Rating:  18 reviews
Sales Rank: 3829
Media: Paperback
Edition: New Ed
Pages: 208
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 7.8 x 5.1 x 0.7
ISBN: 0006551793
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9780006551799
ASIN: 0006551793
Publication Date: May 15, 2000
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Condition: Cover is a little worn
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| Customer Reviews: Read 13 more reviews...
 Undistinctly mediocre... June 25, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
This collection of short stories is a fairly insipid group of overly-similar tales, which neither present an interesting snapshot, nor constitute mini-stories in themselves. As such, it is a disappointment.
First, the good news. Lahiri has a gentle, fairly soft literary style which doesn't grate, and sits fairly easily on the page. It is not going to offend. Neither will it excite, outrage, drive you to drink or euphoria, agitate, or thrill. It simply sits there, like wallpaper.
The subject matter of the stories becomes repetitive very quickly. Indian person arrives in New York/New England. Finds it odd. Feels dislocated. The end. Okay - one or two stories might conceivably cover that concept with something fresh or insightful. Five or six just gets tedious. I can't vouch for the authenticity of the tales set in India, but to this reader it read like a collection of cliches, and could have been compiled by anyone, using Wikipedia and some pictures on Google. Where are the Indian middle classes? Where is the sense of a subcontinent exploding outwards, taking on the world? No, we have the poor women living on the roof.
Ultimately, Lahiri appears to be writing the same basic story over and over. As a result, the stories have no resonance or impact. When you finish one you merely think "oh yeah, that was just like the last one." For the past few years, it has been the fashion to laud just about any book about India, China or Islam that was written by a photogenic woman. This is clearly just another in that sad trend. Lahiri will have to write a fine novel to raise her level up from this mediocrity.
Over-Rated and Over-Feted Lahiri March 29, 2007
1 out of 5 found this review helpful
Unlike most readers and reviewers, I am not gaga over this collection. In fact, I am amazed that several of the stories even saw the light of day. I'm going to puke if I read one thing more about "exotic" Indians, with their fish and meat curries, and mustard. And the urban characters she writes about seem like cardboard cutouts (like the guy in the first story who is depressed because his wife has bought him a sweater as a gift) and somewhat snooty. From the literary perspective, it seems that Lahiri has neither had enough experience of real pain or sorrow, nor does she possess the empathy needed for imagining it.
And she should stick to writing about people in America - she simply has no depth to write about India, a country she knows little about (not that I would fault her for that - she is an American).
The last story in the book is the only story that moved me and that is the only one that makes me think Lahiri has genuine glimmers of talent. But the collection, was by no means, deserving of any major award.
Discerning readers should keep in mind that something need not be good simply because it got an award. Especially in the case of the Pulitzer. Please, ...if Thomas Friedman, the Emperor of hacks and jerks, can get one, then why not anyone else?
 Interpreting maladies. August 24, 2006
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
An Interpreter of Maladies is not, as Mrs. Das thinks (and as the reader of Jhumpa Lahiri's stories may initially be thinking, too), a medical doctor or a psychologist; someone who interprets the origin and meaning of his patients' various illnesses and malaises and then prescribes the adequate treatment. No: an Interpreter of Maladies is someone who helps them communicate, who speaks the patients' language and is therefore able to translate their personal representation of their feelings to the listener who then, in turn, must come up with his own interpretation of those representations.
And like Mr. Kapasi, the improbable hero of this collection's title story, Ms. Lahiri merely gives an account of her characters' feelings and situation in life at one particular moment - she rarely judges them, nor does she strive to tell the entire story of their lives; even where, as in "The Third and Final Continent," the narrative covers several decades, it is truly only one brief but crucial period which is important. No sledgehammer is being wielded; Lahiri's tone is subtle, subdued - like any good interpreter, she talks in a low voice, just loud enough for her listener/reader to understand; and you have to want to listen to her. If you expect her to shout, to force her account on you in bullet points and bold strikes, you will miss the many finer nuances in between.
Jhumpa Lahiris heroes are Asian and American, they live in India, Pakistan, London and the U.S., and they eat (and painstakingly slowly prepare) delicious, spicy and flavorful food. Many of the stories deal with emotions and life situations which, although they happen to be experienced by Indians and Asian Americans here, are truly universal - the slow and unspoken death of a marriage ("A Temporary Matter"), prejudice against the unknown, particularly when it comes in the form of an illness ("The Treatment of Bibi Haldar"), the frustrations of a life of unfulfilled promises ("Interpreter of Maladies"), and the multilateral deceptions of marital infidelity ("Sexy"), blunted by the trappings of middle class materialism (again, the title story).
Most of Lahiri's Asian American protagonists belong to the "intellectual" upper middle class suburbian population of Boston and other East Coast cities. While on the one hand this is a plus, because that is the author's own background, too, and therefore a segment of society she can describe from personal experience - which also allows her to make these characters particularly accessible - it on the other hand provides for the story collection's one deficiency; in that it renders her portrayal of Asian Americans (whether recent immigrants or second- and third-generation U.S. citizens) unnecessarily unilateral, to the point of bordering on stereotype - more precisely, the Indian version of the stereotypes generally associated with this part of society. Nevertheless, most of Jhumpa Lahiri's often unlikely heroes are portrayed in great depth, and many of them with a lot of sympathy for their humanness and shortcomings. In the best sense of her adopted role as an interpreter of her protagonists' maladies, it is this delicate understanding and empathy which ultimately carries the tone in Lahiri's writing and which makes her reader want to listen, and to come up with his or her own interpretation of each of these stories.
Over-rated, unbelievable and trite July 29, 2006
7 out of 17 found this review helpful
Sorry, I disagree with all the reviews (and the Pulitzer prize panel!) - I found these stories dull and just not credible. The dialogue, the things people did, the things they thought - just none of it worked for me. I also found the writing passionless and forced, with oddly jarring words and images that made me think of the author at her computer rather than drawing me further into the story.
There's an odd sense of dislocated time that I don't think was deliberate, for example a girl in present day New York having an affair with an Indian had never heard of Bengal and thought India was somewhere myserious that didn't really exist, like Atlantis. Really?
I also have a major problem with a writer who describes someone as 'polishing off' their drink. How this won the Pulitzer is beyond me and a sad indictment on the state of literature today.
Kind and sensitive June 20, 2006
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
Jhumpa Lahiri's writing is exquisitely simple and elegant. The stories convey immense kindness and the characters are shown in such sensitive and compassionate light that they feel like friends or neighbours rather than fictional types. The best book that I have read in many, many years.
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