Some authors I don’t want to critique.  I just want to enjoy their use of language and their innovative stories and characters.  I revel in the pages and shut the critical part of my brain off.  Jhumpa Lahiri is one of those authors for me.  Her two short story collections, Interpreter of Maladies and Unaccustomed Earth, are among my favorites.

(I have to admit that I have not read her novel, The Namesake, but I did enjoy the movie, though that has more to do with Mira Nair’s direction and a performance from Kal Penn that shows he is more that Harold’s friend Kumar.)

This is all the more impressive given that Lahiri mines the same territory in all her work — the Indian-American immigrant experience and the assimilation of their children.  Honestly, I almost didn’t read Unaccustomed Earth because of this.  Based on the reviews, I thought it would feel redundant after Interpreter of Maladies.  But, while the characters and situations undoubtedly feel familiar, there is such depth of emotion and scope of life in both that they make excellent companion pieces.  Part I and Part II of an ongoing series.

It also makes me happy to see an author continue to work on short stories despite her success.  Many authors release story collections, but few are created as a specific whole.  (Although there are many new writers, particularly coming out of MFA programs, writing so-called “linked story collections” or “novels-in-stories” which often feel like ways to convince agents that don’t represent story collections that in fact this is not merely a story collection when in fact that’s what it is.)  Lahiri’s collections feel like cohesive works, even though most of the stories do not share characters or plot lines, and it is clear that she enjoys continuing to work in the medium.  I find short stories, well executed, quite satisfying.

On that train of thought, I also don’t want to critique Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried.  That one might actually legitimately be called a linked stories collection, as each piece focuses on the grunts who fought the Vietnam War.  The stories are brutal and touching and unsentimental.  If you haven’t read it, go get it now.  In fact, O’Brien’s book and either of Lahiri’s books would make a nice duo for those still looking for summer reading, particularly if you are interested in figuring out what a short story should be.