Can we make it a gender issue? Hardly, for husbands are not exempt from the suffocation, even though they may have slightly more freedom of movement. Can we blame it on the institution of marriage itself? Hardly, for the role of mistress is just as difficult to bear.

Why is a close relationship so often similar to an act of slow suffocation?Ĭan we blame it on the custom of arranged marriages, which appear in some of the stories? Hardly, for the marriages that were founded on physical attraction generate the same issues. Why do we live with people we don't feel belong to us, with people who try to suppress what we value as treasures rather than celebrating with us? It is interesting to reflect on the fact that humans are so mismatched to the lives and people they choose for themselves!Ī collection of short stories, navigating the intricate web of cultural clashes in India, UK and USA, moving back and forth in history, from the trauma of the Partition to the moon landing and beyond that, circling around families for twenty pages just to let go of them when the reader thinks the narrative starts to create a pattern of sense, this is a wonderful reading experience! And bizarrely, the loosely connected short stories seem to match well in their description of misfits.

Interpreter of maladies goodreads