My first encounter with Jhumpa Lahiri was through a college book program that encouraged all first-year students to read The Namesake, a book about forging an identity when one becomes lost amid the ebb and flow of social expectation. That novel, a perfect read for freshman students, was an odd choice for me, an orientation leader and a third-year who felt entirely knowledgeable about the conceptualization of my personhood. But sitting with fresh-faced women who were eager to define themselves in a way that the terrors of high school had not made me realize that the novel broadened not only the way I understood myself (and in fact, that I wasn’t sure of myself at all) but also the way I saw myself in relation to those around me.
It was the first time Jhumpa Lahiri impressed me, but it wouldn’t be the last. Her most recent novel, The Lowland, is an exceptional tale that spans the life of two young brothers, Subhash and Udayan Mitra, who grow up in a small village near Calcutta. Born fifteen months apart, the two brothers act more like twins: they are inseparable, playing together from the minute they wake up and lying down next to each other at night. Their appreciation for one another is beautiful, it projects the image of a perfect childhood, not filled with wealth and travel, but with the ease of companionship, a total lack of loneliness. - See more
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