“The Lowland” by Jhumpa Lahiri – Inescapable Origins
The former leaves for America to partake in scientific studies in peace and serenity, where none will bother him. The latter, on the other hand, joints up with the Naxalite movement that has for goal to rid the Earth, or at least India, of poverty and inequity.
However, tragedy strikes the brothers’ family, and so Subhash must return all the way back home and mend the broken pieces and hopefully salvage what is left. This gets the ball rolling into a story that takes place across three generations, exploring the post-colonial world of India and one family’s struggle during that entire time.
Though the novel certainly stands tall on its own (a bit more on that below), I felt like it was below what Lahiri has the habit of cranking out usually. To begin with, the characters themselves and their motivations were quite hard to decipher, in addition to which the interactions between them often seemed more robotic and forced than natural.
However, tragedy strikes the brothers’ family, and so Subhash must return all the way back home and mend the broken pieces and hopefully salvage what is left. This gets the ball rolling into a story that takes place across three generations, exploring the post-colonial world of India and one family’s struggle during that entire time.
Though the novel certainly stands tall on its own (a bit more on that below), I felt like it was below what Lahiri has the habit of cranking out usually. To begin with, the characters themselves and their motivations were quite hard to decipher, in addition to which the interactions between them often seemed more robotic and forced than natural.
I don’t know if I wasn’t able to determine whether the characters did what they did for themselves or out of altruistic intentions because of my lack of background knowledge on the Indian way of living, but I did find it to be a detriment.
Also, the pacing is irritably inconsistent; in some cases Lahiri can go onwards for pages and pages describing only a few days, and at other times she well fast forward two years in a couple of passages. This makes the book a bit hard to follow and even makes it seem abrupt at certain times.
Now that we are done with the negative, I want to say that the book was very interesting from a factual point of view. Lahiri takes care to provide us with plenty of details and descriptions on how life was back in those days in India. There is a certain sense of realism in this novel which many authors cannot manage to capture… it’s as if you are watching a movie disguised as a documentary.
Now that we are done with the negative, I want to say that the book was very interesting from a factual point of view. Lahiri takes care to provide us with plenty of details and descriptions on how life was back in those days in India. There is a certain sense of realism in this novel which many authors cannot manage to capture… it’s as if you are watching a movie disguised as a documentary.
The whole scope of the story itself is also very interesting to follow, and while there are a lot of characters to remember, things never get overwhelming for the reader as Lahiri knows when to pull her characters out and put new ones in.
This novel may be a bit too big (in terms of the subjects it touches on) and varied for certain readers out there, but those of you who enjoy stories that span generations and talk about little-known time periods which took place in real life will definitely take a liking to this.
 | Jhumpa LahiriJhumpa Lahiri is an Indian American author who was awarded the Pulitzer Prize back in 2000 for fiction, in addition to which one of her books, The Namesake, was made into a movie. She was also appointed by President Barack Obama as a member of the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities. |
Comments
Post a Comment