Unaccustomed Earth, by Jhumpa Lahiri, is a series of short stories each of which follows a Bengali man or woman through many walks of life. The stories range from visits from a parent to getting over past loves to dealing with the deaths of loved ones. A few consistent themes run through the stories. The two most prevalent themes are adapting to life after the death of a loved one and coming to face one's personal issues. In the first story, Ruma and her father are adapting to life without her mother. Ruma's father has gotten over the passing of his wife and moved on to loving another woman, but Ruma is still filled with grief and pain over her mother’s death and she believes her father is too. This theme of healing from the passing of a loved one is also seen in the last 3-part story of Hema and Kaushik. In this story, Kaushik loses his mother to breast cancer at the age of sixteen. Devastated by this event, Kaushik shuts out his new stepmother and stepsisters in the second part of the story when they try to fill the void left by his mother, and isolates himself from his old life.The other theme that appears again and again in Unaccustomed Earth is coming to face one's problems. This theme is most obvious in the fourth story about Sudha and her alcoholic brother, Rahul. In the story, Rahul develops a serious drinking problem once he goes off to Cornell for college. It gets to the point where he drops out of school and has a few encounters with the law. Eventually, he runs away from home and stops communicating with his family for about a year. The next time Sudha hears from him, she learns he has turned his life around and has gone through rehab. This idea of coming to face one's flaws is a large theme in Unaccustomed Earth.
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