Analyzing craft

In Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri, the best thing for me is how emotion packed it is without being cutesy. The stories are slow, and have a way of discreetly squeezing passion in between margins so you don't realize how hard the story has hit you until the end. The craft of these stories are simplistic in a beautiful way. I've always liked books by Jodi Picoult, where a cheesy (but well written) metaphor is on every other page. This book focuses more on moving the story forward and mapping out the characters than throwing morals and symbols in your face.

There are eight stories, and each one had something for everybody. Childhood, parenting, romance, marriage, travel, death. Personally, I felt closest to the story about the girl and her relationship with her mother. As the character aged, she discovered, hated, and forgave her mother. As someone growing up like she was, I could connect and find the story intriguing.

This book was one of the closest to life I've ever read. It throws out the details and characters, but in order to find morals and metaphors you have to really contemplate what you are reading.