Quarantine Book Reviews

This year was unlike any other, and I spent a lot of it in bed, away from peers, friends, and classmates. It provided the perfect background to get lost in the fictional worlds of these books. I read many books over the course of the year, but these three kept my attention and wouldn’t let go until I finished them outright.

Interpreter of Maladies, Jhumpa Lahiri

I am an Indian American; my parents both immigrated from India when they were young adults in the late 1980s. There are certain quirks and expectations that first generation immigrants and the children of these Indian ex-pats experience that hasn’t been rendered well by conventional mass media. Jhumpa Lahiri though captures the quintessential Indian immigrant experience through this collection of short stories. Writing about both Indians living in India and those living in the United States, especially their daily strife, struggles, and circumstances, Lahiri frames their experiences as the inherent transformational trauma of immigration. Her characters try to maintain the religions, languages, and customs they cherished but have to endure the larger construct of a new community, with the marital, extra-marital, child-related problems that come with it. Her style and settings envelop the stories with a certain sense of “real-ness” that deserves to be experienced by a member of any culture.

The Immortalists, Chloe Benjamin

One of my favorite genres is what I like to call, “family epics.” They are sprawling, multi-generational tales that span multiple decades and countries. I love learning about the ramifications, consequences, and impacts decisions taken in one character’s present has on their life and the lives of their descendants. So when one of my classmates recommended The Immortalists, I was hooked. Though this novel doesn’t cover multiple generations, it covers one group of siblings forever changed when they learn the dates of their deaths from a supposedly all-knowing woman. It was an engaging hook and Chloe Benjamin’s beautiful prose imbues this novel with life, uncertainty, and emotion, which left me hanging onto every word just so that I could remain with these characters as long as possible.

A Woman Is No Man, Etaf Rum

I read this novel while waiting in line to vote early back in my hometown. I was thinking that this work would keep my attention for the 2 hours I had to wait and do nothing more, but I was very wrong. This novel is another family saga, a multi-generational work that details a female Palestinian immigrant, thrust thousands of miles from her home in occupied territory into the house of her husband in New York City, as well as her daughter seeking to make a her life her own, separate from the looming future of being married off. Rum makes the reader grapple with the concept of female agency in the patriarchal culture of Palestinians, juxtaposed against the setting of a so-called ‘equal’ America. Culture reigns nearly unchallenged for both of lead women in this novel, but Rum gives them complexity and dimension, power that belies their oppression. This is just one facet of the Arab American experience, though it is a powerful, deep, and intricate one at that.

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This post was contributed by Vinay Maddula, COVID Protocol Task Force Chair at ADEA COSRF District 2 and student at Columbia University College of Dental Medicine ('23). Instagram: @vinthemad