⭐⭐
Jhumpa Lahiri is a Pulitzer award winning novelist. The
Lowland was shortlisted for the Man Booker Award, and it wasn’t shortlisted
for its queer content. So what is it doing here? Right?
It story is actually about a couple, Subhash and Gauri.
Gauri is the widow of Subhash’s rash brother, Udayan. Subhash marries the
pregnant widow and moves to the States from India. Like much of Lahiri’s work,
this is relentless in its sheer joylessness and depression. Her writing is
relentlessly grey and heavy.
The one spark of light in this dreary novel is Gauri’s affair with
another woman, Lorna, a graduate student. (And that is also why this book finds place here). The woman-loving-woman part of the novel is delicate and adds the only bit of colour to
the novel.
We particularly like the fact that despite being much married
(twice), it is eventually the love that Gauri shares with another woman that fulfils
her and remains with her. This is the most real and relatable thing in the
novel.
We bring this book here and give it a two stars for those
few pages and scenes of love and tenderness that make this novel worth plodding
through.
⭐⭐
