The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri

Like the last book I read, We Are Water, this book has another ‘bad’ mother as its central character. But it is much more than that. It tells the story of a young Indian woman who marries a Maoist in India, only to lose him to the revolution. She is left pregnant and vulnerable when his brother steps in to marry her. They go to America to work and raise the child. The rest of the book is about the broken relationships in this small family and about the influence that the dead first brother has over their lives. Jhumpa Lahiri is a very sensitive writer, who uses the language beautifully. The story line is fairly sparse – these people simply live their lives – but that story is well told and her descriptions of Rhode Island in particular are exquisite.