Book Review

The Lowlands by Jhumpa Lahiri

seem determined to drive her out once the baby comes and raise the child themselves. What life would she have after that as the unwanted widow of a terrorist? Determined to care for her, Subhash marries Gauri and brings her to Boston, where a daughter, Bela, is born, with Subhash listed as father on the birth certificate.

What further twists follow that!

Lahiri also shows us Subhash’s unfailing love of Bela through all the ways she separates herself from him. And she shows his continuing openness to life, to the possibility of falling in love again, even in middle age and early old age.

Some twenty years ago the IndianAmerican writer Jhumpa Lahiri won the Pulitzer Prize for her short-story collection “Interpreter of Maladies.” I enjoyed the stories but didn’t think them Pulitzer-quality. Then ten years ago Lahiri published a great novel, “The Lowlands.” That work is definitely Pulitzer quality, enriching of mind and heart. Let me tell you about it.

The first thing you should know is that it’s a saga, following the life of Subhash Mitra from his boyhood in 1940s Calcutta to the U.S. for his graduate education, and on through his adulthood in the U.S., where he stayed to work as an environmental scientist and where his daughter was born and grew up, ending in the 21st Century when he’s a grandfather.

What a lot of twists and turns Subhash encounters along the road of his life!

The first twist comes when his beloved younger brother Udayan, always the more adventurous sibling, gets involved in a radical communist group while they’re both in college in Calcutta. As close as the brothers are, Subhash wants nothing to do with the movement and leaves India for Boston and further education at MIT while Udayan stays in Calcutta as the radical group begins turning to violence, murder, and terrorist attacks. Udayan’s role adds a historical element to the novel, as his Maoist group called Naxalites really did lead an uprising in the 1960s and still exists.

The second twist comes when Udayan marries, impregnates his young wife named Gauri, and then is captured and executed for his involvement in terrorist acts. What’s to become of the widow and child of Subhash’s beloved brother? He returns to Calcutta and finds that his parents neither like Gauri nor want her in their household. They

One revolves around Gauri. Even after her grief lessens and even with Subhash’s tender care for her, she never comes to love her husband. She cooks their meals and sleeps with him, but she isolates herself from him as much as possible, both emotionally and physically, beginning her own Ph.D. program and staying in her study reading and writing for hours at a time.

Another twist also revolves around Gauri. Just as she is really no wife, she is also no mother. She provides for Bela during the day but interacts with her perfunctorily, Subhash being the loving parent when he’s home from work in the evenings and on weekends. He and Gauri discuss when to tell Bela he’s not her biological father, but he convinces Gauri to delay the revelation, fearing it will ruin Bela’s close relationship with him.

Then comes a major twist. Subhash takes Bela to Calcutta when she’s 10 for a long visit with her grandparents while Gauri stays in Boston, a seemingly normal decision since she was close to neither Subhash’s nor her own family. When they return, however, they find Gauri gone and a note left behind saying she has left them, has found a job in California, and wants and expects no further contact with them. Wow!

Subhash is surprised only a little, knowing the distance Gauri kept from him and their daughter, but Bela is devastated. What happens afterward shows Lahiri’s insight into our human nature, our pain, and our survival skills.

She shows us Bela’s response to abandonment. Bela blames Subhash as a teen, feeling he’d somehow driven her mother away and could get her back if he’d only try. She keeps her distance as a young adult and avoids commitments. But she finally struggles upward, back into family life. Even Subhash’s revelation of her origin does not deter her return to him.

And Lahiri shows us what Gauri’s life amounts to after her rejection of Subhash and Bela, ending with her unannounced appearance at Bela’s door near the end of the novel. What happens there seems a sad but entirely fitting climax to a life lived solely for self.

In life we drive a new road every day. Sometimes we’re on straight highways we think are leading us where we want to go, and sometimes we find ourselves there but other times we find ourselves somewhere else. Sometimes the highway becomes a rutted road in a wilderness, and the car’s water pump goes out. Sometimes we end up at deadends and have to backtrack. And sometimes we wreck our cars. But if we persevere, we end up where we need to be.

Lahiri knows all this, and she shows us how we can endure and prevail. “The Lowlands” is a wonderful read. N