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A review by spaces_and_solaces
Whereabouts by Jhumpa Lahiri
4.0
Lahiri is a Pulitzer prize winner & her prose is so poetic and minimalistic that sometimes just a few of her words have the power to cut you to your core.
Her work more often than not focuses on cultural relocation. If you’ve read / or watched The Namesake you’ll know. But, this book is different!
TW: This book may induce melancholy.
Whereabouts is narrated by a woman - unmarried, middle aged writer & a literature professor who has lived in the same city her whole life. (The city is hinted to be Rome several times).
She realizes, in the middle of her life’s journey, that she has lost her way. This story is about her trying to figure out her place in the world.
She deliberately fills her life with routines probably to mask the loneliness.
We follow her as she visits the same trattoria for lunch, swims twice weekly at dinnertime, visits her distant mother twice monthly and contemplates repeatedly about her unhappy childhood.
From the pages you get glimpses of the narrator's vulnerability.
There is a recurring theme of longing and solitude which is even more heartbreaking when the narrator is with her mother, her friends, at the bar or at a party.
Everything fades into darkness for the narrator, the places and the people and she is left with a gaping hole of loneliness that no one can cure.
She is but another nameless woman in a nameless city.
Lahiri’s prose is so delicate and you cannot help but wonder if this is some metaphorical journey into the author’s own mind.
It’s a brilliant story reflective of the urban solitude marked by longing & loneliness.
Her work more often than not focuses on cultural relocation. If you’ve read / or watched The Namesake you’ll know. But, this book is different!
TW: This book may induce melancholy.
Whereabouts is narrated by a woman - unmarried, middle aged writer & a literature professor who has lived in the same city her whole life. (The city is hinted to be Rome several times).
She realizes, in the middle of her life’s journey, that she has lost her way. This story is about her trying to figure out her place in the world.
She deliberately fills her life with routines probably to mask the loneliness.
We follow her as she visits the same trattoria for lunch, swims twice weekly at dinnertime, visits her distant mother twice monthly and contemplates repeatedly about her unhappy childhood.
From the pages you get glimpses of the narrator's vulnerability.
There is a recurring theme of longing and solitude which is even more heartbreaking when the narrator is with her mother, her friends, at the bar or at a party.
Everything fades into darkness for the narrator, the places and the people and she is left with a gaping hole of loneliness that no one can cure.
She is but another nameless woman in a nameless city.
Lahiri’s prose is so delicate and you cannot help but wonder if this is some metaphorical journey into the author’s own mind.
It’s a brilliant story reflective of the urban solitude marked by longing & loneliness.