Subcontinental Drift Most of the characters in these stories move between India and the United States. By Jhumpa Lahiri. Fate, in the form of friends, relatives or lust, arranges a match.
Books are easy to start, too, and they pose a similar challenge.
No marriage is as arbitrary and accidental as one between a writer and a reader, set up by a brief infatuation in a bookstore or the enthusiasm of a third party. Perhaps because of this congruence, ill-advised marriages have been one of fiction's most fertile subjects, ever since Squire B. abducted Pamela. Samuel Richardson's latest heir is Jhumpa Lahiri. Her debut collection of short stories, ''Interpreter of Maladies,'' features marriages that have been arranged, rushed into, betrayed, invaded and exhausted. In Lahiri's sympathetic tales, the pang of disappointment turns into a sudden hunger to know more.