Beyond “Hell-Heaven,” I felt stunned by “Year’s End,” a short story about grief that literally made me roll around on my couch and scream “omg Jhumpa Lahiri step on me” because of how beautifully and painfully she portrays the main character’s emotions of loss, as well as the first story “Unaccustomed Earth,” about the push and pull of family ties.
Themes of South Asian culture and immigration pervade these stories in both subtle and powerful ways. Whether writing about an older sister who feels complicit in her younger brother’s substance use disorder, or a graduate student caught up in his roommate’s unhealthy relationship, or parents’ feelings of entanglement with and separation from their children, Lahiri manages to capture it all through writing that feels realistic and immersive.
She has an impeccable eye for detail both in relation to setting and capturing small mannerisms and reactions that underlie the ways we connect to one another. I genuinely thought to myself “wow, I’m so glad I decided to keep living even through difficult times so I could experience the bliss of reading this story.”įanboying “Hell-Heaven” aside, I felt so impressed by Lahiri’s rendering of human emotions and relationships. Feelings from and thoughts about the story came to me all throughout Sunday, then I reread the story Sunday evening and cried and felt such catharsis. I read the story this past Saturday and felt awestruck by the end. The daughter’s relationship with her mother strained by issues of culture, the mother’s infatuation and then fallout with this new man Pranab, and the ways the characters heal and grow over time – I loved it all. I think “Hell-Heaven” exemplifies what makes Jhumpa Lahiri a remarkable writer she describes relational and familial dynamics in an understated way that somehow feels so emotionally visceral and poignant. In the story, we follow a Bengali family living in the United States and what happens when the mother within the family falls in love with a fellow Bengali man who inserts himself into their dynamic, all through the perspective of the young daughter within the family.
I’m gonna make this review lopsided right out the gate because I want to say the short story “Hell-Heaven” in this collection blew me away, gave me hope to live, and reminded me of the power of fiction at its finest.
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