It Is Her Most Unsettling Book!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                                          "The Lowland" is a sad story, darlings, but not tearjerker sad.  You can't just wipe your eyes when the story is over, go out to the kitchen, and comfort yourself with cookies and milk!  This story haunts you, and gets under your skin, which is why it is so unsettling.  Over the course of several generations occur events that yield tragic outcomes that did not necessarily have to be.  No one in the book behaves as expected.  All of which means another triumph for Jhumpa Lahiri, albeit an unbalanced one!

                                                The novel's title is symbolic, as every outcome in the story revolves around what took place in the titled locale.  Set in 1960s Calcutta, the novel starts out as a story about two contrasting siblings--parent pleasing Subhash, and budding political activist Udayan.  When the latter is killed during a political insurrection, things take a turn in tone and locale, when Subhash moves to the States, and marries his brother's wife, Gauri, one of the most puzzling characters in fiction.  Even before she is tragically widowed, she is not altogether sympathetic, and the choices she makes while in America had me wondering why she even bothered marrying anyone, at all.  Towards the end, there is a bitter mother-daughter confrontation, where Gauri seems to get what she deserves, but by that time it is too late to care, and I found myself, by then, feeling a twinge of sympathy for Gauri, an independent spirit, who pays a price for her freedom.  Yet all the actions--of the brothers, her daughter, granddaughter, are set in motion by she.  She is almost like a siren hanging over this book.  And when the reader finally learns what actually took place in the lowland, the tragedy is brought home even more.

                                                Lahiri's superb prose style and narrative scope get the reader through what is essentially a very depressing book.  There is no levity, and just the faintest whisper of hope, at the very end.
Reading this book is a frustrating experience; the writing is gorgeous, but the issues and ideas are pounded into the reader as though being stoned alive!

                                                 Come on, Jhumpa, it's not like you are expected to be Lauren Weisberger!!!!  But, next time, can't you give us a more balanced narrative????????