Saturday, April 12, 2008

498. Unaccustomed Earth

There's something about Pulitzer prize winner Jhumpa Lahiri's prose that always manage to fascinate me and influence my writing. Ok, that was a very pompous statement. I only wish I could write like that, or could express emotions with that economy of words.

Take for example, her new novel, Unaccustomed Earth. Here's a paragraph from the title story, courtesy of New York Times:

The postcards were the first pieces of mail Ruma had received from her father. In her thirty-eight years he'd never had any reason to write to her. It was a one-sided correspondence; his trips were brief enough so that there was no time for Ruma to write back, and besides, he was not in a position to receive mail on his end. Her father's penmanship was small, precise, slightly feminine; her mother's had been a jumble of capital and lowercase, as though she'd learned to make only one version of each letter. The cards were addressed to Ruma; her father never included Adam's name, or mentioned Akash. It was only in his closing that he acknowledged any personal connection between them. "Be happy, love Baba," he signed them, as if the attainment of happiness were as simple as that.


I haven't got the book yet, but hoping for another masterpiece.