Customer Reviews (1)

Interpreting maladies.
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. ... Read more

Book Description
This digital document is an article from Poetry, published by Thomson Gale on January 1, 2008. The length of the article is 1151 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Closing the circle.(COMMENT)(Obituary)
Author: Jhumpa Lahiri
Publication: Poetry (Magazine/Journal)
Date: January 1, 2008
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 191Issue: 4Page: 364(3)

Article Type: Obituary

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more

Amazon.com
A great story gets its hooks into you right from the start; you knowyou're in the hands of a good writer when the very first sentence transports you wholly into another world. "Mother preferred Zulu servants." "It must be, Ruth thought, that she was going to die in the spring." "Who would have thought that a war of such proportions would bother to turn in its fury against the fools of Chelm?"

The 21 fictions featured in The Best American Short Stories 1999 have very little in common--but whether they're about ranchers or commuters, romantic seekers or New Age pilgrims, what they do share is a sense of urgency. In each of them, there's a kind of voice that announces its need to be heard. "I'm not a bad guy," pleads the narrator of "The Sun, the Moon, the Stars," and even though he cheats on his girlfriend, by the end of Junot Díaz's story you might be tempted toagree anyway. (Especially considering the charming way he turns Melville's Bartleby the Scrivener into a verb--as in, "A lot of the time she Bartlebys me, says, 'No, I'd rather not.'") "Real Estate," by that master of bittersweet comedy Lorrie Moore, starts by repeating "Ha! Ha! Ha!" for two solid pages but becomes a rueful take on marriage, house-hunting, and even death: "The body, hauling sadnesses, pursued the soul, hobbled after. The body was like a sweet dim dog trotting lamely toward the gate as you tried slowly to drive off, out the long driveway. Take me, take me too, barked the dog."

Other standouts in this collection include Alice Munro's "Save the Reaper," a kind of "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" where no one is killed or saved; Rick Bass's haunting evocation of winter in the north country, "The Hermit's Story"; and Tim Gautreax's "The Piano Tuner," about a manic-depressiveCreole princess playing cocktail piano in a motel lounge. (This is one tale that truly does end with a bang, not a whimper.) Taken together, they are ample evidence that the American short story is alive, well, and eminently able to--in the words of guest editor Amy Tan--"help us live interesting lives." --Chloe ByrneBook Description
In making her selections for this year's volume of The Best American Short Stories, Amy Tan was drawn to stories that satisfied her appetite for the magic and mystery she loved as a child. In this vibrant audio collection, fantasy and truth coexist brilliantly in works by veteran writers as well as by accomplished new voices. Each tale, read here by its author, offers a rich journey into a different world. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (20)

Both Wheat and Chaff....
It's probably not good for the anthology that the piece I most enjoyed was Amy Tan's introduction; I thought that by itself was worth checking the book out. The actual stories left me wanting something more, with the exception of "The Sun, The Moon, The Stars" by Junot Diaz, "Real Estate" by Lorrie Moore, "The 5:22" by George Harrar, and an honorable mention to Heidi Julavits' "Marry the One Who Gets There First". These stories all combined great writing with great insight, all in the framework of good narrative flow. The others--and I confess to not reading several--lacked something. Annie Proulx's piece sucked me in, and had vivid, sparkling dialogue and great writing. However, it failed to deliver on story. When I came to the end, enchanted by all the previous elements, I felt cheated and angry at it's sloppy conclusion. Even Stephen Dobyns' "Kansas" left me flat, and Dobyns never fails to impress me. Overall, this is a good collection, just not a great one by any means.

Black sheep of the family
Every year I anxiously look forward to the arrival of the newest addition to my favorite book series, and every year my patience is rewarded and my appetite for a wonderful collection of short stories is entirely satisfied... that is until this 1999 edition of The Best American Short Stories. The compilation of short stories selected by Amy Tan this year has sadly disappointed me. Furthermore, my disappointment is escalated when one must consider the fact that Amy Tan is among my favorite authors. The combination of my favorite book series and one of my favorite author would presumingly produce a definite great edition yet sometimes the surest things are the most unforeseen.

The Best American Short Stories has always been a reliable and constant supplier of great contemporary work and uniquely distinctive tales. Stories that are far from typical but pleasantly uncanny and sometimes pleasingly bizarre. Stories that do not have a simple introduction, climax, and then resolution but stories that create their own course. Stories that you find yourself still thinking about days later in the shower, still trying to understand what exactly you comprehended. Yet instead what I found was a pretty traditional and conventional assortment of stories. I am not saying that these stories are particularly bad stories because they are not, it is just the straightforward fact that they are not as daring or come near to being as refreshing as their predecessors. I found many of her selections boringly light even when dealing with subject matters that are all but light. They tell their story and that is all. Everything felt so laid out and revealed that there was no room for analyzing or dissecting. Many of the stories were exactly as what appeared and nothing else, nothing left underneath to discover. They reminded me of the stories the entire class would read as one in the eighth grade and everyone wouldreach the same obvious conclusion of what the moral and purpose of the story was as the teacher nods her head to provide assurance.

There is still a couple of decent stories in this entire book (such as Pam Huston's The Best Girlfriend You Never Had) that renders the two stars given but in no way is that an endorsement to spend your money on two short stories. Instead, I recommend you simply visit you nearest bookstore, lean against a bookshelf and spend 15 minutes reading those two stories. Once you are done, place that book back on the self because that is where it belongs. I never thought I would be saying that about a book from this series but hopefully this is the first and last time I will have to. And hopefully this is just the black sheep in this family of over-achievers.

P.S.
In the end, I simply realized that perhaps a great novel writer should stick to novels and not picking short stories.

Did I miss something?
I am a big fan of the Best American Short Stories series, but this one was a huge diappointment.I like stories that have some meat;they should resonate with depth a long time after being read.This collection offers few such stories.Then again, I wasn't expecting much more from Amy Tan.Try '98 or '00 instead.

A fine collection
I found this to be an excellent, thoughtfully assembled collection of stories.I must especially disagree with the reviewer who felt that having a b writer like Pam Houston in a collection with Rick Bass ammounts to a literary injustice.Quite to the contrary, Houston's story is the best in the book and bears re-reading.(And, if you've checked out John Updike's Best Short Stories of the Century, you'll note that her story was one of the few tales from the nineties to be included.)This is a slow, collection, certainly, which may turn off some readers.But I've thoroughly enjoyed it.

A diverse collection of voices and stories
Amy Tan has done a good job selecting 1999's batch of stories for"Best American Short Stories"; I've read better volumes, but I'vealso read worse.My favorite story was Tim Gautreaux's "The PianoTuner," a hilarious, unnerving tale about the advantages anddisadvanages of "fine-tuning" another person's character throughthe use of drugs or other modern methods.The next-best story, in myopinion, was Chitra Divakaruni's delightful and wistful "Mrs. DuttaWrites a Letter," another story about trying to change one's characterin order to fit in with difficult surroundings, and the limits on one'sability to do so.Finally, my third-favorite selection was Rick Bass's"The Hermit's Story," a tale of rugged individualism and survivalin a winter setting that ends with a wonderful image involving fire and afrozen lake, an image I won't spoil for you here.

This volume iscertainly the most diverse edition of the series so far in terms of itsauthors' racial and cultural backgrounds--at least a third of the storiesare by non-white authors or have non-white main characters.As Amy Tannotes, however, what matters more than racial or cultural diversity isdiversity of voice and experience.I found more in common, for example,between "The Piano Tuner" and "Mrs. Dutta Writes aLetter," in both stories' focus on the theme of changing one'scharacter and learning to adapt to unfamiliar surroundings, than I didbetween "The Piano Tuner" and, say, Annie Proulx's moreimpressionistic "The Bunchgrass Edge of the World" (another storyabout rural Americans); or between "Mrs. Dutta Writes a Letter"and Jhumpa Lahiri's ominous "The Interpreter of Maladies"(another story about Indian families).In any event, this year's editionprovides plenty of diversity of both background and voice, and is a solidaddition to the "Best American Short Stories" series. ... Read more

Product Description
This edition for sale on the Indian Subcontinent ONLY!!! ... Read more