SWEET 'N' LOWLAND

Jhumpa Lahiri is an elegant stylist, effortlessly placing the perfect words in the perfect order time and again so we're transported seamlessly into another place. In her new novel, The Lowland (Knopf), it's the 1960s, and violent revolution has come to Calcutta and America, with reverberations to be felt by generations to come. Every family story is somehow a war story; Lahiri has a talent for coolly illustrating this truth. On one side of The Lowland is the bookish and obedient Subhash, on the other his charismatic, rebellious younger brother, Udayan, to whom Subhash has always felt inferior. While Subhash breaks away from home to quietly pursue his studies in America, Udayan stays behind to join the Naxalite movement. Lahiri conveys the complicated nature of their relationship in Udayan's letters to Subhash: "The days are dull without you. And though I refuse to forgive you for not supporting a movement that will only improve the lives of millions of people, I hope you can forgive me for giving you a hard time. Will you hurry up with whatever it is you're doing? An embrace from your brother." What happens to Udayan in the lowland is the spark that ignites the novel. Subhash's forced return and the discovery that the woman his brother has defiantly married is also pregnant will launch him into the battle of his life.

E. S.