INTERPRETER OF MALADIES (BY) JHUMPA LAHIRI

Published 1999, 198 Pages
Characters: A
Writing: A-
Plot(s): B
Pacing: B+
Poignancy: B+

In the title story of Jhumpa Lahiri's short story collection, Interpreter of Maladies, an Indian tour guide guides an American-Indian couple around the historical sites of their native land, a country they associate with but have never visited before.  He begins to take an interest in the wife of the group, projecting his own marital problems onto this stranger's relationship.  Yet as a guide, he can do no more than observe from behind a social wall and go home with no real revelations except some faint disappointment.  In a way — and likely for good reason, as it is the title piece — this short story works as an abstract for the collection as a whole, and maybe even this whole subgenre of literary fiction.  Lahiri writes beautifully crafted, endearing character pieces that tug at a few melancholy emotional strings before fading away, with no clear lessons learned.  Like the interpreter in question, Lahiri plays the role of a listener as well as narrator, and refrains from explicitly stating her judgements. 

Lahiri is far from alone in realizing that subtlety leads to a more organic relationship between reader and character.  But unlike the many, many who attempt this style — the ending so ambiguous you might not even notice it's over, the depressed, doomed protagonists — Lahiri's prose is exceptionally strong and her characters more vivid than average.  There's a healthy amount of variety and creativity in the plots of these shorts, putting her ahead of peers like Lorrie Moore, as far as I'm concerned.  There are, of course, the multiple stories about doomed marriages and mid-life romantic failures, but Lahiri attempts a few more experimental pieces, and is much better than most at letting her characters stand out through their own personalities, rather than seeming mere avatars of the author.  Almost every piece is based around Indian culture in some way, but never to the extent that it becomes the primary driving force of the story.

If I have any criticism of Lahiri's style, it's that she is perhaps a little too passive in too many stories.  Few writers are as skilled at pulling themselves back as a narrator and letting each story reach its end with no real conclusion or catharsis, but even so, Lahari doesn't quite escape the trap of this type of story.  Though this is a short collection, under 200 pages with just nine stories, only a few of them left any real impression on me.  Lahiri falters in most of the pieces set in India, where she attempts to mix a more traditional-sounding narration with quirky literary character pieces.  Other stories simply feel too small.  With such vivid characters featured in the best stories here, those in between feel more arbitrary in comparison, and lacked 'punch' in some important way.  Still, this isn't so much a criticism as a result, and in any short story collection, a reader is going to focus most on the stories they connect to.  I wasn't able to fully connect with everything here, but this isn't really Lahiri's fault.  Interpreter of Maladies deserves a solid recommendation as a collection full of natural characters and sophisticated literary craftsmanship.