Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com

Average Customer Rating:

One of the best books I've ever read	Customer Rating:
To give a frame of reference, some of my favorite authors are Margaret Atwood and Barbara Kingsolver. I have searched and searched for another introspective, intelligent, strong female voice, and finally I have found it. I plan on buying every one of her books and keeping them forever. In this book alone, my wisdom cache has increased, certainly the mark of a great book.

Excellent collection of stories	Customer Rating:
This is one of the best collections of short stories that I have read. Many of her characters stayed with me long after I finished the book. I also enjoyed "The Namesake" and can't wait to read her latest book.

Lovely stories	Customer Rating:
I'm a fan of Lahiri's and enjoyed Namesake as well. Check it out for yourself and I'm sure you will agree. I too am tired of reading stories of the "Indianness" of being Indian. So as an Indian I appreciate this.

Dark and macabre	Customer Rating:
The book was very well written, but I found it to be a little too dark and macabre for my tastes - not exactly something you'd want to curl up and sink into...

Some great stories, others not memorable

Customer Rating:

I liked most of these stories. The first story, "A Temporary Matter," made me cry and lament a tragic failure of people to communicate and understand one another. The last story, "The Third and Final Continent," was equally moving, and restored my faith that there is innocence in love. Overall, Lahiri's keen understanding of the nuances of relationships is impressive. In her brief stories, the complicated relationships between the characters are remarkably well-developed. She is equally deft at capturing the nuances of the human personality- her characters often can't be labeled as protagonists or antagonists. Rather, they exist in the same gray moral area as the typical reader. The main fault I find with this collection, however, is a lack of consistency. It is easy for me to pick out the stories that were extraordinary in the book and, as for the rest, they tend to be somewhat forgettable. To be honest,I was also a bit put off by the sparsity of Lahiri's writing and the absence of figurative language which, for me, is a beautiful and important element of short fiction. Metaphor and other figurative techniques can add, succinctly, a deeper layer of meaning which Lahiri's stories lack somewhat.