Whereabouts

A Novel

By Jhumpa Lahiri
Written in Italian, translated by the author
Alfred A. Knopf, 2021

Its been quite a while since I’ve “visited” with Jhumpa. Since then a lot has happened in our parallel literary pursuits: this is her her third novel (in English) while I have written four. To be fair: in that time she has written numerous short stories as well as essays, non-fiction and poetry, most of which in Italian, her language of choice since moving there in 2009. It is also fair to say that her multiple awards and short-lists elevate her output to a different echelon than Professor Batty’s worldwide readership of 12.

Whereabouts is billed as a novel and, while there is a vague story arc, it is really more a collection of short 250 to 600 word first-person impressions of a person’s experience of the world around them (that sounds like the a description of this blog!) These tales are bittersweet and sometimes melancholy but never sentimental. Lahiri’s writing is elegant and unfussy. A perfect book for a lazy autumn afternoon.

Recommended.

Photograph by Venturelli