This isn’t a very deep novel, there are no hidden meanings, no metaphors to pick up in delight. But it is a very intimate story of culture differences and the longing for traditions and values that can be transplanted but are not quite the same in a new land. The main ingredient missing, for Ashima, is family. While Ashoke has coped with the changes in a different manner, becoming more of an island that is self sufficient. This has perhaps come from his injuries in the train wreck as a youth and the resulting long rehabilitation that was spent in a loneliness, even as he was well taken care of by his family. The shock of the accident, the realization that a gentleman he had briefly come to know had instantly died, the loss of his treasured book, may have prepared him better, taught him not to hold onto things as they can be taken away.
The losses are more clearly felt by Ashima, even as she makes friends, enters motherhood, gets used to Cambridge. Each ritual is still clouded by the missing mother and father, grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. The third person narrator deftly describes much of the Indian dress, rites, dishes, and yet makes them easily understood without heavy detail. The voice is neutral, even as it describes Ashima’s worries, her loneliness, her giving birth, and at this point in the story, the telephone call that brings the bad news of the sudden death of her father back home.
“He told you something you’re not telling me. Tell me, what did he say?”
He continues to shake his head, and then he reaches across to her side of the bed and presses her hand so tightly that it is slightly painful. He presses her to the bed, lying on top of her, his face to one side, his body suddenly trembling. He holds her this way for so long that she begins to wonder if he is going to turn off the light and caress her. Instead, he tells her what Rana told him a few minutes ago, what Rana couldn’t bear to tell his sister, over the telephone, himself; that her father died yesterday evening, of a heart attack, playing patience on his bed. (p. 45)
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology