Reviews

The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri

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gomezh18's review

dark emotional sad medium-paced

3.75

I really enjoyed this book thought deserves a 5 star rating ? This could fit into the ancestry genre without the DNA tracking and looking for your parents. A nice twist and typical India versus America.
Interesting the graft and political followings of Mao and Lenin Marxist ideals.

roseleaf24's review

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4.0

This story covers the life of a family, from India to Rhode Island to California and back again. It is told with Lahiri's characteristic quiet reserve, but nevertheless conveys the strong emotions of love and loss. The telling flows beautifully among the voices of various family members, letting each tell their own part of the tale. I couldn't help but think of The Nightingale, since I'd just discussed it, as this touches the same themes of siblings torn between devotion to family and devotion to a larger cause, and our utter failure to appropriately understand and heal the personal devastation caused by trauma.

alisonhori's review

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4.0

This book is between a 4 and 5 star for me and I keep going back and forth. The story telling is absolutely vivid and the, generally very ordinary characters just living their lives, completely came to life so much so that I found myself incredibly frustrated with the crappy parenting choices of Subhash who was otherwise wonderful. The book is very carefully constructed so virtually any imagery raised early in the book will come back later...maybe several times. Sometimes this book felt a little too carefully constructed. Overall, while this book was very much about a specific family, details from the story absolutely resonated and continue to resonate with me and I learned about a piece of Indian history that I really didn't know much about at all. This was my first book by Lahiri and I am anxious to read others...I just started Luminaries and so far, I am very annoyed that Lumminaries beat this out for the Man Booker but we will see.

angelamichelle's review

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3.0

Two brothers, their wife, and daughter. One brother radicalizes and the other is constant.

nderiley's review against another edition

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4.0

I liked the multi-character perspective of lowland and enjoyed that one of the characters was not very likeable. It is a nice change of pace for me to have a character be challenging in that way, relateable but still dislikeable.