Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri

I tend to get into patterns with reading. I read The Kite Runner, and for months only read lit based in the Middle East...
I read a book of ee cummings poetry and for weeks read just poetry...
Then I read All Aunt Hagar's Children and got stuck on books of short stories...

Interpreter of Maladies is one of those- a book of short stories. I think that this book is by far my favorite collection of short stories. They are sometimes confusing, sometimes inspiring, sometimes sad, sometimes exactly what I was thinking... The stories are all moderately short, but they get into you. With All Aunt Hagar's Children, I could move from one story into the next right away. With this book I had to take a break between them. I would read one every night, putting down the book even though I felt like reading more. I would even pick up a magazine or something to be able to keep reading, but I wouldn't be able to pay attention to it. The stories in there just got into my mind, my heart. I really couldn't leave them behind so quickly and had to spend a day with them in my mind before I was ready to say goodbye to the characters.

Some of them were blessedly short stories, as I don't think I could have had a whole book with the characters, but others I wanted more- wanted to know how the rest of the characters' life unfolded. I wanted to know them better, why they felt the way they did about certain things or why they didn't try to get more from life... that is how I want a story/book to end- either with me really wanting more, or with me being completely satisfied, I don't like ending in the middle ground. Ya know?

Anyway, it was a great book and the stories were very filling even though they were not full novels. I recommend it to Anyone and Everyone!!!

Trishia