From Publishers Weekly
The female protagonists of eight of the nine stories in Divakaruni's sensuously evocative new collection are caught between the beliefs and traditions of their Indian heritage and those of their, or their children's, new homeland, America. Nowhere is this dichotomy of cultures so well evoked as in the title story, in which Divakaruni's gift for writing image-filled prose illuminates Berkeley resident Ruchira's gift for painting mythic figures from Indian legends, and poignantly underscores a very contemporary marriage dilemma, which Ruchira solves by intuiting her dead grandmother's advice. Equally excellent is "The Names of Stars in Bengali," the beautifully nuanced story of a San Francisco wife and mother who returns to her native village in India to visit her mother, in which each understands afresh the emotional dislocation caused by stepping into "a time machine called immigration" that subjects them to "the alien habits of a world they had imagined imperfectly." One misses a similar level of sophistication in such stories as "The Blooming Season for Cacti," "The Love of a Good Man" and "The Lives of Strangers," all of which seem contrived, overwrought and predictable. Yet at her best, as in "Mrs. Dutta Writes a Letter" and "The Intelligence of Wild Things,'' Divakaruni writes intensely touching tales of lapsed communication, inarticulate love and redemptive memories. This is a mixed collection, then, but one worth reading for the predominance of narratives that ring true as they illuminate the difficult adjustments of women in whom memory and duty must coexist with a new, often painful and disorienting set of standards. Starting with her first novel, The Mistress of Spices, India-born San Francisco resident Divakaruni has acquired a receptive audience, which undoubtedly will greet this new work with enthusiasm. Agent, Sandra Dijkstra. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
Divakaruni's narrative elegance serves not to reduce the emotional impact of her fiction but rather to concentrate and intensify it. After two enormously successful novels, including the splendid Sister of My Heart (1998), she returns to the short-story form with which she had such success in Arranged Marriages (1995). Classically shaped but spiked with the unexpected, these potent tales portray families shattered by violence and stretched to the breaking point between the wildly disparate worlds of India and the U.S. Each story revolves around a reflective and strong-willed heroine, most of whom left India with the intention of living lives both fuller and freer than the traditionally restricted routines of their grandmothers and mothers, only to find themselves floundering, unsure of how to proceed, what to believe, and who they are. In "What the Body Knows," an Indian woman living in the U.S. almost loses the will to live after the birth of her first child. "The Blooming Season of Cacti" traces a young woman's journey from the shock of her mother's death in a Bombay riot to an Indian community in the California desert, where she is undone by her panicked choice of fantasy over intimacy. In "The Intelligence of Wild Things," a young woman living in California, whose mother is dying in Calcutta, muses on the Bengali word abhimaan, which describes a "mix of love and anger and hurt." This is the very turmoil Divakaruni captures so indelibly in stories about doting Indian grandparents and skittish American grandchildren, a young mother unsure about whether she can forgive her father for abandoning her and her mother, and a young Indian American woman who travels to India after a suicide attempt to try and recalibrate her life. These hauntingly beautiful stories of epiphany and catharsis place Divakaruni in the vanguard of fine literary writers who touch a broad spectrum of readers. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Review
“Powerful…. Beautifully observed…. She arranges bouquets of sensual detail and crisply etches unspoken passions.”–Los Angeles Times Book Review

“Authentic and complex…. Sophisticated and compassionate…. Moving…. [It is] a vision of what it means to be human, and in that resonance lies this collection’s triumph.”–The Washington Post

“Masterful…. Sophisticated…. Beautiful prose…. Divakaruni delivers poetic renderings of her characters’ thoughts and sensations as they think and feel their way around cultural obstacles and emotional snags.”–Chicago Tribune

“Divakaruni’s stories will touch everyone who reads them…. It is her gift for language and her ability to cast sentences of exquisite beauty that make her such a high-performance writer.”–USA Today

“Magical…. Each [story] is a clear, compressed gem of intelligence and insight…. Entertaining…beguiling…lyrical…poignant…. Divakaruni is one of our finest chroniclers of the trials of life among first-generation Americans…. Her prose style is elegantly and gracefully formed, intermingled with aphorisms, dreams, letters and moments of perfect imagery and metaphor…. Irresistible and seductive, The Unknown Errors of Our Lives is shaped by the voice of a true storyteller, each piece filled with private charm and wise empathy.”–The Oregonian


Review
?Powerful?. Beautifully observed?. She arranges bouquets of sensual detail and crisply etches unspoken passions.??Los Angeles Times Book Review

?Authentic and complex?. Sophisticated and compassionate?. Moving?. [It is] a vision of what it means to be human, and in that resonance lies this collection?s triumph.??The Washington Post

?Masterful?. Sophisticated?. Beautiful prose?. Divakaruni delivers poetic renderings of her characters? thoughts and sensations as they think and feel their way around cultural obstacles and emotional snags.??Chicago Tribune

?Divakaruni?s stories will touch everyone who reads them?. It is her gift for language and her ability to cast sentences of exquisite beauty that make her such a high-performance writer.??USA Today

?Magical?. Each [story] is a clear, compressed gem of intelligence and insight?. Entertaining?beguiling?lyrical?poignant?. Divakaruni is one of our finest chroniclers of the trials of life among first-generation Americans?. Her prose style is elegantly and gracefully formed, intermingled with aphorisms, dreams, letters and moments of perfect imagery and metaphor?. Irresistible and seductive, The Unknown Errors of Our Lives is shaped by the voice of a true storyteller, each piece filled with private charm and wise empathy.??The Oregonian


Book Description
In nine poignant stories spiked with humor and intelligence, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni captures lives at crossroad moments–caught between past and present, home and abroad, tradition and fresh experience.
A widow in California, recently arrived from India, struggles to adapt to a world in which neighbors are strangers and her domestic skills are deemed superfluous in the award-winning “Mrs. Dutta Writes a Letter.” In “The Intelligence of Wild Things,” a woman from Sacramento visits her brother in Vermont to inform him that back in Calcutta their mother is dying. And in the title story, a painter looks to ancient myth and the example of her grandmother for help in navigating her first real crisis of faith.
Knowing, compassionate and expertly rendered, the stories in The Unknown Errors of Our Lives depict the eternal struggle to find a balance between the pull of home and the allure of change.


Download Description
From the bestselling author of The Mistress of Spices and Sister of My Heart comes a collection of moving stories about family, culture, and the seduction of memory.


From the Inside Flap
In nine poignant stories spiked with humor and intelligence, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni captures lives at crossroad moments–caught between past and present, home and abroad, tradition and fresh experience.
A widow in California, recently arrived from India, struggles to adapt to a world in which neighbors are strangers and her domestic skills are deemed superfluous in the award-winning “Mrs. Dutta Writes a Letter.” In “The Intelligence of Wild Things,” a woman from Sacramento visits her brother in Vermont to inform him that back in Calcutta their mother is dying. And in the title story, a painter looks to ancient myth and the example of her grandmother for help in navigating her first real crisis of faith.
Knowing, compassionate and expertly rendered, the stories in The Unknown Errors of Our Lives depict the eternal struggle to find a balance between the pull of home and the allure of change.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"Don't we all have to pay, no matter what we choose?" a young woman asks in "The Love of a Good Man," one of the remarkable stories in Chitra Divakaruni's beautifully crafted exploration of the tensions between new lives and old. In tales set in India and the United States, Divakaruni illuminates the transformations of personal landscapes, real and imagined, brought about by the choices men and women make at every stage of their lives.

"The Love of a Good Man" tells of an Indian woman happily settled in the United States who must confront the past when her long-estranged father begs to meet his only grandson. In "Mrs. Dutta Writes a Letter," which was selected for The Best American Short Stories 1999 and short-listed for a 1999 O. Henry Award, a widow, inadvertently eavesdropping, discovers that her cherished, old-fashioned ways are an embarrassment to her daughter-in-law. A young American woman joins a pilgrimage of women in Kashmir and, in the land of her ancestors, comes to view herself and her family in a new light in "The Lives of Strangers," Two women, uprooted from their native land by violence and deception, find unexpected comfort and hope in each other in "The Blooming Season for Cacti." And in the title story, a young woman turns to her painting and the wisdom of her grandmother for the strength to accept ther fiance's past when it arrives on her doorstep.

Whether Divakaruni is writing about the adjustments of immigrants to a foreign land or the accommodations families make to the disruptive differences between generations, she poignantly portrays the eternal struggle to find a balance between the pull of home and the alluring promise of change.

SYNOPSIS

From acclaimed and beloved author Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni comes a new collection of moving stories about family, culture, and the seduction of memory.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly