Oh, Jhumpa. Sometimes she’ll write sentences that are so elegant you wonder why all the sentences you write come out like, “The cat is pretty.” But that’s just how it is.
It’s a total coincidence that I read this a few months after I moved across the country. The book is named after a Hawthorne quote about how human fortunes may be improved if “they strike their roots in unaccustomed earth.”
The NY Times did a great review of this if you’d like the entire book to be ruined for you before you read it. Save it until after.
