Since moving to Italy in 2011, Jhumpa Lahiri has entered a new phase in her writing career. Her new novel, Whereabouts, which she wrote in Italian and translated into English herself, is a far cry from her 2003 debut novel, The Namesake, and her early fiction centering on the lives of South Asian immigrants. But owing to her immense talent, Lahiri’s carefully crafted prose identifies this novel as a part of her body of work more than any subject matter similarity could. This novel is a series of vignettes, narrated by a middle-aged literature professor, unmarried and a bit melancholy, living in the same Italian city that she was born in and hasn’t lived outside of. The novel moves between her daily routines and practices and more notable interactions with the people in her life moving around her. The novel has a subtle air of solitude, that can veer a bit into melancholic loneliness, but ultimately returns to a quiet appreciation of the simple things in life.
There are 46 chapters in the novel, and each vignette is named for the place it takes place in, i.e. “On the Street,” “In the Office,” “In the Pool,” “At the Hotel,” or “In My Head”. A sense of place is absolutely crucial to this novel, as the narrator moves between different spaces in her daily routine, and her solitude often makes her hyperconscious of her surroundings. She eats meals at the same restaurants at the same time every day, she visits the pool at the same time every day, etc. In a vignette set in the piazza where she eats lunch, she reflects, “I hear the babble of people as they chatter, on and on. I’m amazed at our impulse to express ourselves, explain ourselves, tell stories to one another. The simple sandwich I always get amazes me, too. As I eat it, as my body bakes in the sun that pours down on my neighborhood, each bite, feeling sacred, reminds me that I’m not forsaken.”
There’s also an important distinction between physical space and movement, and metaphysical place and movement. The narrator reflects on a sort of inertia that has set in during her middle age, and especially in the ending chapters of the novel, when she’s invited to move abroad for work, she reflects how stuck she’s been in her home and routines. The book plays a lot in the space between shadow and light (absolutely love that the cover picks up on that!), and the everyday cycles of life. There is a real ebb and flow to these vignettes, as the narrator oscillates between the comfort of “spartan” apartment and the outside world, and the bit of tension created by her attraction to a friend’s husband that never really progresses, or her visits to her mother that generate anxiety connected to her difficult upbringing and uneasy relationship with her mother.
This book is a fascinating meditation on the creation of the self in middle age, and the tension between identity and geography. It’s a novel that breaks down barriers, literally for the narrator: “I might have said no, I might have just stayed put, but something’s telling me to push past the barrier of my life”, but also in terms of form. The fragmented narrative is a fascinating exercise in an untraditional character study, and while refusing to offer lots of details it actually feels more intimate than a more traditional novel. Lahiri is constantly in a state of rebirth, reinventing her form and subject, and this novel is just the latest entry in her celebrated career. It’s a very slim novel, one that could be finished in just one sitting, but its slow and methodical building has a weightiness that feels incredible given its short length. A lovely little book, surely worth the time it takes to dive in.
Further Reading: I don’t even nee to say this, but Lahiri’s The Namesake and Interpreter of Maladies are simply incredible fiction. If you like this diary style narration, Rachel Cusk’s Outline trilogy is definitely for you.