Let's start off by saying, if you haven't read Lahiri before, don't start here.

The Lowlands tells the tale of two brothers whose lives take two very divergent paths - - but who remain connected by one woman. It's a saga in the sense that it covers the brothers' lives from young childhood through old age/death.

I wanted to love this book. I've really, really enjoyed all of Lahiri's other works. This book is more of a "critics darling" in my opinion. It's beautifully written, and Lahiri deftly traverses time, place, and point of view. Her writing is both simple and yet very evocative.

Yet something was missing.

I felt that the pace was just a bit too slow and that the book lacked suspense. One brother was a character you could really embrace, but it was hard to care about the fates of the other characters . . .even though I thought they were portrayed realistically. They just weren't very sympathetic.

It really would have been a three star read for me overall except that the last several chapters were much more compelling, and I ended up feeling glad that I had read the book. If we had a 3.5 rating, I'd truly be using that . . .but since we don't, I rounded up to 4 stars.

Overall, if you like Lahiri, AND you really like literary fiction, I would say keep this book on your TBR. If you are looking for entertainment, I'd say steer clear. ( )

NA ( )

Wonderful, beautiful novel. ( )

Family saga set in India and the US, this book starts in the 1950s as a story of two brothers, Subhash and Udayan, living in Kolkata with their parents. Though close in age, their temperaments differ significantly. Subhash is introspective while Udayan is impulsive. Udayan becomes involved in the Naxalilte movement. Subhash moves to the US to pursue a doctoral program. At this point, a significant shift takes place. A tragedy occurs. One brother takes a selfless action to help the other brother’s wife, Guari. It then becomes a story about a mother who abandons her young child and husband.

The setup to this novel spurred my curiosity, but I found the structure unsatisfying. It shifts suddenly in time and frequently changes protagonists, making it feel choppy. It is a character-driven novel, but the characters are not developed in enough depth to understand their motivations, which are hard to accept and never explained. The characters do not exhibit much growth, though the storyline covers over fifty years.

The first half is stronger than the second. The dramatic events of the early pages give way to a mundane tale of daily living. It picks up again toward the end, returning to the original storyline and providing a few insights. The prose is stellar, but overall, the disadvantages outweigh the advantages. I have also read Lahiri’s The Namesake, which I vastly prefer to this one.
( )

On Lennon's birthday April 22nd, 1969, a third Communist party was launched in Calcutta. The members called themselves naxalites, in honor of what had happened at naxalbari. The official name was the Communist party of india, marxist - leninist. The CPI(ml).
"Theirs was a new form of communism, ,Sanyal declared. They would be headquartered in the villages. By the year 2000, that is only 31 years from now, the people of the whole world will be liberated from all kinds of exploitation of Man by man and will celebrate the worldwide victory of marxism, leninism, mao TSE Tung's thought."
That is a very sad declaration, since the powers that be have decided we should go towards fascism.

Subash, once he finishes his undergrad in calcutta, goes to study his graduate degree in Rhode island. He finds that he loves this place, with all its wide open spaces.
Walking on one of his numerous walks by the shoreline, one day subhash meets a white girl, holly, and her son. Little by little they begin a romance. But the day holly dumps him, he gets all butthurt.
"She had caught him in his own web, telling him what he already knew. He realized he would never visit her cottage again. The gift of the binoculars, so that they would no longer have to share; he understood the reason for this, too.
He could not blame her; she had done him a favor by ending it. And yet he was furious with her for being the one to decide.
We can remain friends, subhash. You could use a friend.
He told her he had heard enough, that he was not interested in remaining friends. He told her that, when the ferry reached the port in galilee, he would wait for a bus to take him home. He told her not to call him.
On the ferry they sat separately. He took out Udayan's letter, reading it once again. But when he was finished, standing on the deck, he tore it into pieces, and let them escape his hands."
When he gets home, he finds a telegram, saying that Udayan has been killed. He goes home to Calcutta.
This book jumps around in timelines. Takes you forever to find out what happened sometimes. But Udayan was killed by the police for his involvement in the Communist party.
Subhash marries his brother's widow, Gauri, knowing that his parents only want Udayan's child. He brings her to Rhode Island.
This book cracks me up, because the timeline takes place in the 20th century, when people smoked all over the place. But you forget about this, so passages like this at first make you open your eyes wide in astonishment:
"the professor was dressed casually, in a sweater and jeans. He smoked cigarettes as he lectured. He had a thick brown mustache, long hair like many of the male students. He had not bothered to call the roll.
Students around her were also smoking, or knitting. A few had their eyes closed. There was a couple at the back, with their legs pressed together, the boy's arm draped around the girl's waist, stroking the material of her sweater."
This is where Gauri starts visiting the University where subhash is studying. She wanders into a philosophy lecture hall one day, which was her subject in Calcutta, before her studies were cut short by marrying udayan.

I hated the character of gauri. She has baby bela, but she feels like she has no interest in her. This was the opposite of what I felt for my babies.
"Play with me, Bela would say.
At times gauri capitulated, holding on to a book she was reading, stealing glances while it was Bela's turn. She played, but it was never enough.
You're not paying attention, Bela protested, when gauri's mind strayed.
She sat on the carpet, conscious of Bela's reproach. She knew that a sibling might relieve her of the responsibility to entertain Bela this way. She knew that this was partly what motivated people to have more than one child."

When subhash brings 10-year-old Bela to India, after his father dies, they return to find that Gauri has fled the house, just leaving a note that tells nothing of where she's gone.
Bela grows up, and takes up a nomad's life.
Years later, so much time has passed, but Bela shows up at subhash's house, tells him she's pregnant, and asks if she can stay there.
He realizes it's time to tell her that he's not her real father, and tell her the circumstances of his coming to play that role.
He tells Bela the story of her father's death:
"As the night wore on and the information settled over her, she asked a few questions about the circumstances of udayan's death. She asked a bit about the movement, of which she was ignorant, and was now curious; this was all.
Was he guilty of anything?
Certain things. Your mother never told me the full story.
Well, what did she tell you?
He told her the truth, that Udayan had plotted violent acts, that he had assembled explosives. But he added that after all these years it remained uncertain, the extent of what he had done.
Did he know about me? Did he know I was going to be born?
No.
She sat across from him, listening. Somewhere in the house, he told her, there were a few letters he'd saved, that Udayan had sent to him. Letters that referred to gauri as his wife.
He offered to read them to bela, but she shook her head. Her face was implacable. Now that he'd come back to life, he was a stranger to her."
Bela takes off, he finds out the next morning. He's afraid he'll never see her again, but he's wrong.

I read the author's other book, "interpreter of maladies", in 2012, and gave it four stars, so I obviously liked it a bit more than this book. However, I didn't start writing my thoughts and connections about books until about 2017, so I don't know what I thought about it. I just didn't like the characters that much in this book, and I couldn't relate to the setting of Rhode Island. I do like reading about india, though. ( )