The introductory quote alone, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, got me hooked. These stories are, in many ways, like The Namesake. Jhumpa Lahiri writes with the same graceful style, both matter-of-factly and gently at the same time. A sense of sadness pervades pretty much every story. She has keen insight into family dynamics, articulating ideas that I recognize but would not have been able to express myself.
Each story has Indian-American characters. In some stories, Indian/Indian-American culture plays a large role, while in other stories, the characters could well have been of any ethnicity. Like in The Namesake, the struggle of reconciling two clashing cultures is a theme, as is the sometimes unexpected tendency of finding a bond of comfort and familiarity with those who share your background and history.
Incidentally, Lahiri sets a number of her stories in Massachusetts, and she mentions local towns by name. I got a kick out of imagining her characters in towns with which I am well familiar. Also, her frequent references to elite universities may strike some readers as over-the-top, but from my experience actually being in the Asian-American community, her use of choice schools only increases the credibility of each story, at least for me.
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