Or, as the writer puts it when discussing her therapist: “As if each session were the first and only time we met. Each entry, most only a few pages long, stands on its own any could be removed without leaving an absence.
But narrative is not what this book is after. As our eyes move across the images, sensitive to each reframing, a loose narrative emerges of an Italian woman at a crossroads in her life. “Whereabouts” is like a photographer’s contact sheet. “In spring I suffer,” one entry begins, and another: “A bachelor friend of mine likes hosting dinners at his house.” Each reflection is place-stamped by its title: “At the Coffee Bar,” “In the Hotel,” “At My House,” “In the Shade,” “In My Head,” “At the Supermarket” and so on. These are the work of an unnamed writer in her late 40s who teaches at a university. After publishing the book in Italy in 2018 as “Dove Mi Trovo,” Lahiri translated it into English, choosing the title “Whereabouts.”Ī slender novel, “Whereabouts” is composed of 46 chapters, or entries, sequenced over the course of a year. Reviewing Jhumpa Lahiri’s third novel, her first written in Italian, feels like an impossible task because the work is pared down to its essence, and arrives like a holding space for work to come.
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