The Lowland: National Book Award Finalist; Man Booker Prize Finalist (Vintage Contemporaries)

THE LOWLAND REVIEWJhumpa Lahiri has moved to the front of my favorite author list after reading “The Lowland.” I’m fickle with my favorite authors so how long she remains there is dependent on what I read next. The fact remains that she’s a remarkable writer and has captured me with this magnificent novel.A researcher, cautious and reliable Subhash, relocates from India to America, and his younger sibling, rash and idealistic Udayan, is assassinated as a political activist in Calcutta. Subhash marries the widow, Gauri, who is carrying his brother’s child, to remove her from the brothers’ disapproving parents who are creating an oppressive environment for her. The ensuing years are chronicled as Subhash attempts to quiet the reverberations that affect all members of his family, although his efforts are mostly ineffective. His relationship with his niece, and stepdaughter, Bela, is a captivating episode of love and acceptance, but family members generally go their separate ways, each carrying their own bag of ashes.This story of two brothers with very different approaches to life is largely joyless but it does not leave an aftertaste of depression. The lives of the characters steadily progress with hints that something pleasant might happen, a hypnotic writing style that keeps reader involved. Disappointment, unfulfilled dreams, secrecy, and many deaths inhabit this lengthy novel but the ending, in just a few pages, brings the story to a tranquil closure.Lahiri touches senses and allows descriptive passages to be felt rather than read. She describes rain as both a feeling and a sound. “The roof of the cottage was as thin as a membrane, the pelting sound of the rain like an avalanche of gravel.” Recollections of seaside cottages are nostalgically gathered. “He pulled… into the driveway, bleached shells crackling under the tires as he slowed to a stop.” And sleepless nights are relived. “He longed for sleep, but it would not immerse him; that night the waters he sought for his repose were deep enough to wade in, but not to swim.”Several generations pass and the reader is carried along by the author’s mesmerizing story. It is written crisply in brief and succinct language. There are no lengthy, soaring flights of inner thoughts with obscure meanings. Relationships are clear and believable. The dialogue is easy to follow although the author doesn’t use quotation marks, but I don’t miss them. As mentioned, the author’s talent for drawing the reader into the story and allowing action to be felt, rather than simply directing eyes over words on a page, creates a glorious experience.As I end the book I have a curious thought. If Lahiri can write a book of sadness with such skill and poignancy, how might she present one of light heartedness and wondrous experiences? Just a thought.Schuyler T WallaceAuthor of TIN LIZARD TALES

In this well-developed novel of family relationships, which is also a love story and a story of betrayal on several levels, author Jhumpa Lahiri introduces four generations of one family whose history begins in Tollygunge, outside of Calcutta, and then moves off in many different directions before settling finally in Rhode Island. Traveling back and forth in time, with points of view shifting among several different but interrelated characters, the novel creates an impressionistic picture of events which begin in 1967 with a political uprising in India, the family effects of which continue into the present. Two brothers, only fifteen months apart in age, become linchpins of the novel. Subhash, the older, more cautious brother, is far more apt to watch any action, even as a child, than his brother Udayan, the more adventuresome brother, who is always participating in the action and testing limits.When, in 1967, an uprising in Naxalbari, four hundred miles from Calcutta, presages the beginning of a larger revolution of peasants against wealthy landowners, Udayan sees this as an impetus for wider change as a member of a Soviet-style Marxist organization, and after that, as a member of the Naxalites. While Subhash is studying out of town, Udayan is painting slogans and stimulating revolution, and when he meets Gauri, a philosopher who seems to share his point of view, he suddenly marries her, without seeking permission from his family and foregoing all the usual traditions. When Subhash soon after that receives a telegram to return home to Tollygunge, however, he knows that some family disaster has occurred. Ultimately, he returns to his PhD program in Rhode Island, but this time he is joined by his new bride, pregnant with a child which is not his.Thematically, the novel considers all aspects of what constitutes a family, what responsibilities of family life can (or should) supersede one's personal desires, and how, if at all, love can flourish under circumstances in which two people decide to adhere to a set of traditions and responsibilities not necessarily of their own choice. "You can't go home again," physically or emotionally, the novel seems to say, at the same time that it also expands on the idea that we are who we are and must accept that. The characters' interactions, responsibilities, and the consequences are particularly fraught as the novel moves through nearly fifty years of personal and social change within one family through several generations, the novel focusing on the academic Subhash and his family in the United States for most of the novel.Lahiri's prose is often elegant, and her descriptions of settings are perfect for the uses she makes of them. Rhode Island, along the coast, is true-to-life in its damp response to changing seasons and its glorious flourishing of life in the estuaries and marshes. The novel is somewhat less successful in its depictions of some characters, especially those of the mothers, both the mother of Subhash and Udayan and of the mother of Bela, whose career decision appears to be cruel. Because she is not fully developed, her actions are, unfortunately, less understandable to the reader than they might have been. The author does a remarkable job of straddling the line between realism and melodrama on an almost epic scale, however, a saving grace which keeps the reader actively involved and enthusiastic as Subhash and his family develop over three generations.