The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri Review
Genre : Fiction Drama
What will people do when their lives are bent out of shape by the forces of the world, of those whom they love and those who love them?
Lowland is at once comforting and unsettling as it deals with the familiar internal workings of deeply human characters and the harsh alien circumstances that befall them. A tale of two brothers-Subhash and Udayan, each carried by winds of ambition and enlightenment to places very different and very far apart – Lowland evokes a feeling of poignant gloom and at times utter hopelessness.
This book for me was downright depressing. Beautifully depressing. As the men deal with their own ideologies and their demons, it’s the women in the story that stand out. Gauri, Bela and even the mother of the two brothers are such vivid forces of will that sometimes nurture but sometimes destroy, never willing to succumb to the crushing tyranny of fate.
The characters are not likeable. They are just real. Everyone in the book does terrible things – to others and sometimes to themselves. Sometimes they do beautiful things too. Sometimes the terrible things are in a way beautiful. You can see these characters and feel what they are feeling as if they are more real than real people.
In the end, the The lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri is an exploration of what violence and unrest can do to the ordinary lives, dreams, relations and entire identities of people who are caught in its web by the threads of love and duty.
Recommended for :
Anyone who is looking for a hauntingly beautiful story of an ordinary family from Calcutta, spanning across generations as they deal with both the rise and the after effects of the Naxalite movement.
Pros
- > Great Prose
- > Complex Characters
- > Captivating Narrative
Cons
- > Gloomy Story
- > Not Conventionally likeable characters
- > Slow Pace
