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Situational Irony
Style
Explanation and Analysis:
Lahiri’s spare, technical prose fills the story. Characteristic of her many other works, the author invests Lilia with a flatness of tone that shies away from more overt displays of emotion. Such a style lends itself to her clear-eyed, stiff account that frequently retreats to the passive voice. Lahiri’s sentences are often simple, though some can also take on a snaking complexity:
Each week Mr. Pirzada wrote letters to his wife, and sent comic books to each of his seven daughters, but the postal system, along with most everything else in Dacca, had collapsed, and he ha not heard word of them in over six months. Mr. Pirzada, meanwhile, was in America for the year, for he had been awarded a grant from the government of Pakistan to study the foliage of New England.
