Unaccustomed Earth
Book written by Jhumpa Lahiri

I love talking about this author as I have read all her books....its a great feeling for a non reader like me. I highly recommend her for anyone who wants to read some simple and highly engaging stories on human relationships. I am sure you must have heard of her books "The Namesake" which was adapted to make a popular film and " Interpreter of Maladies" which won her a Pulitzer prize...but i think "Unaccustomed Earth" is by far her best writing.

This book has simple short stories that focus on one aspect of relationships that most of us are in...either father daughter, siblings, friends, room-mates, significant others and the not so common emotion of dealing with parents second marriage.

These stories are of individuals who are either first or second generation Indians in the US so obviously has a lot of emotions/issues/ situations that people like me would never face or like some of my friends in the US say that ..."it doesn't happen like that"....but then i feel they are very genuine. Irrespective of where we live or what generation we belong to its easy to relate to those emotions. Another interesting aspect of these short stories is that even though they are individual stories with no cross reference but you realize that she is talking about the same set of people in different relationships.

Once I started a story I was not able to keep the book down coz I wanted to know the end and in most cases the endings surprised me.