Third Post: Unaccustomed Earth

React to the following quote, in regard to your novel:

“What really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn’t happen much, though.” J.D. Salinger

When I first began reading this book, I was not a fan. I found the first chapter dull and was confused about why the chapters jumped from family to family. When I got further into the book, I began to enjoy it more and more. Suddenly, I couldn’t put it down.

First of all, I hardly ever read books about other cultures, and when I do it has always been for school. I do not know much about other cultures and I realized after reading this book that I would like to.
I wish I could call up Lahiri because I want to know her story. I would like her to tell me her whole life, from beginning to the present. I would like to know what influenced her to write the stories that are in this book. Was she inspired by her own life? Did she go through some of the same situations that these characters did?

I know I can find some of these answers online, most likely in an interview of some sort, but I do not have any desire to do that. I want to hear from Lahiri herself and have a conversation with her.

I felt like all of the stories were dark, none of them had happy endings. I would like to know why. Does she believe no one in this culture receives a happy ending? Does she wish something in her life went differently?

I believe that since this book is so interesting and filled with many different stories, that the writer must have to be interesting and filled with many different stories as well.

I was so surprised at how dark the endings of the stories turned out to be. I feel like no one got what they wanted and nothing turned out well for the people.

This is the part of the book that I’m still struggling with. I just would like to know why the author made this choice and why that happened.

 Overall, I wish I could call Lahiri so that we could have a conversation and so that I could talk to her about her life as well as the choices she made in this book.

I thoroughly enjoyed it and this book inspires me to read other books about different cultures so that I can become a more rounded individual.