BOOKS: Interpreter of Maladies

Jhumpa Lahiri’s “Interpreter of Maladies” is a charming collection of short stories, some set in her ancestral Bengal region of India, but more often about Bengali immigrants in North America. (Some will recognize her as the author of “The Namesake”, which was also made into a movie.) Her stories often keenly illustrate the tensions of people who have one foot in the old world and one foot in the new, or those between generations of immigrants. Typically the story is told from the perspective of a particular character, and in several, that character is a child. She has a lovely skill of capturing a child’s observations of adult relationships around them. In other stories, characters implicitly wrestle with the meaning of marriage. The nine stories are all very well told, with thoughtfully developed characters, and an enjoyable read.