This was an unusual selection for us in that it’s a short fiction collection, not all of whose stories are about marriage. Lahiri won a Pulitzer Prize for this debut work and I’m so pleased to have finally had an excuse to pick it up. Her characters tend to be Indian or Bengali (first- or second-generation) immigrants in New England, though there are also two pen portraits of unfortunate peasant women back in India. These two are less fixed in time and feel rather fable-like, especially with the plural observers’ voice in “The Treatment of Bibi Haldar.”

Of the nine stories, six are in the third person and three in first. Apart from a couple set in 1969 or 1971, the rest are contemporary. Lahiri alternates between relationship studies and accounts of encounters with strangers across generations and/or cultures. There’s a girl’s impressions of the dignified fellow expat visitor at a time of political instability in “When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine,” and the American boy who gets a glimpse into an unfamiliar world on afternoons at his Indian child-minder’s house in “Mrs. Sen’s.” Culture shock goes the other way for the narrator of “The Third and Final Continent,” who has moved from Calcutta to London to Cambridge and rents a room from a formidable 103-year-old landlady.

Often, food is a reminder of home; there are lots of delicious descriptions of curries. Extramarital infatuation is contrasted with true knowledge of another person – a child is wise beyond his years in defining “sexy” as “loving someone you don’t know.”

If you seek out just one story from this excellent collection, make it “A Temporary Matter,” about a couple reeling from a stillbirth. On five successive evenings when the power company cuts their electricity to repair the line, they cook a special meal, light candles and tell secrets, including one concerning the child they lost. This story, which opens the collection, blew me away. The other highlight among a very strong pool is “This Blessed House,” in which a couple keep finding tacky Christian religious relics the previous owners left behind. Even though they’re Hindus, Twinkle decides to keep it all up for superstitious reasons, though her new husband disapproves.

All but one of the stories are standouts, and I could see how they’ve influenced story writers in the decades since, including Anuja Varghese. What linked them all together for me was the theme of denying or affirming common humanity.

More fool me for waiting all these years to try Lahiri! I have two more of her books on the shelf that I’ll try to get to soon. (Secondhand – Community Furniture Project, Newbury)

The main question we ask about the books we read for Literary Wives is:

What does this book say about wives or about the experience of being a wife?

Marriage can be a welcome support, or a handicap. We see timid wives adjusting to a new country, and newlyweds – via arranged marriage or choice – trying to understand each other’s ways. The loss of a baby threatens to separate one couple, but instead they cling to each other. (Statistics show that 20% of marriages break up over the death of a child; previously it was thought to be 80%.) The villagers think marriage will cure Bibi Haldar, but no man will have her. Mrs. Sen is dependent on her husband for everything because she’s too scared to learn to drive.

In some traditional cultures, it’s risky for wives to assert their independence. America seems to offer women greater freedom. Mrs. Das, from the title story about an Indian American family touring India, transgresses traditional expectations by admitting to not loving her husband and children and having had an affair. Twinkle, too, flouts conventionality by refusing to submit to her husband’s wishes. But, of course, this doesn’t guarantee happiness.

See the reviews by Becky, Kate, Kay and Marianne, too!