"Whereabouts" by Jhumpa Lahiri (Bloomsbury, 2018)

Written first in Italian as "Dove Mi Trovo" - "where I find myself" - then translated by the author.

The novel comprises journal entries, more or less, of a 46 y.o. working in Italy at a university. Her mother is alive, with a busy social life. Her father died when she was 15. Both women feel alone. I think she grew up in the same city. She's gradually ferrying her books from home to her office.

She likes the husband of a friend. She helps an independent young girl who she's been aware of for years. She meets her ex in a bookshop. She'd been with him 5 years, breaking up when she met a women who was also his lover. They'd compared notes. She had therapy for a year (her mother was unkind to her). She acts as a therapist for a successful, busy mother who fears that her daughter misses her. She swims twice a week (overhearing the sad changing-room chat), bonds with a beautiful manicurist, books theatre tickets well in advance. She wonders how well one can interpret a person (her parents, her first boyfriend) by their attitude to money. Finding a decapitated mouse on the path upsets her.

She goes on breaks - "The only problem is that here, too, I feel pressure to do what everyone else does". She has male company - "Never married, but like all women, I've had my share of married men", "Today one of my lovers keeps calling".

Rarely do chapters allude to earlier ones - in a paper she sees that a prof she talked to at a conference dies. Her infatuation with the husband of a friend cools when she dog-sits for them.

She buys a suitcase in the shop that used to be her favourite stationers - she's got a fellowship for a year, abroad. Before she goes, she visits her mother. After, she writes "My mother, by now, clings to life like a yellowing piece of Scotch tape in a scrapbook. It can detach at any moment, and yet it still does the job. All you need to do is turn the page to unstick it, so that it leaves a pale rectanglar stain behind". She's not impressed by what she's just written, it feels overwrought. She visits her father's grave. She cleans her flat so that there's no trace of her. In the train to her new job a family get in and noisily eat, speaking a language she doesn't recognise. One cuts the hair of another. Then they leave.

Other reviews

• Tanjil Rashid (Whereabouts is a novel in vignettes, each chapter a postcard from an everyday landmark – “In the Bookstore”, “At the Beautician”, etc – typically experienced alone, although sometimes highlighting the consolation of strangers. ... Where her English thrived on the particular, Lahiri’s Italian reaches for the universal. Astonishingly, Whereabouts contains not a single proper noun: nothing to identify individuals or places.)
• Madeleine Thien (This is a difficult novel because the pain of the narrator’s isolation feels extremely real. The book sheds dramatic structure, connective tissue and other characters, as if they were all part of a lifelong cage. In the brief, almost airy entries, where sentences are honed to minimalist beauty, the overriding sensation is of a shrinking world)
• Sharon Steel (Whereabouts is a book about metamorphosis, loneliness, the burden of being a child, the savagery of nature, the joys of community, food, and friends. ... The woman’s search for identity and equilibrium amid the flux makes her a classic Lahiri character. What sets her apart is that, unlike the strivers and seekers of Lahiri’s previous books, this woman takes a perverse comfort in the air of melancholy that settles over her life)

"In other words" by Jhumpa Lahiri (Bloomsbury, 2017)

A book of articles (dual language - English/Italiano) that initially appeared in Internazionale. In the "Author's Note" she writes that "Apart from obligatory correspondence, I have written exclusively in Italian for more than two years" (p.xiii). She wrote the book in Italian, in Italy. It's translated by Ann Goldstein.

She was born in London, and brought up in the States, using Bengali until she went to school. After that, Bengali remained the preferred language at home, her mother trying to stay as Indian as possible. She's multi-talented (several degrees, a Ph.D. in Renaissance Studies, a Pulitzer for her first book of short stories - though she writes "I received a prize that I was sure I did not deserve, that seemed to me a mistake", p.167).

I know several people who suddenly had to cope in a new language. I've read about people who, because of brain injury, etc, struggle with language. I'm not convinced that Lahiri's experiences of learning a new language are any more interesting than theirs. There's no humour in this book, and her insights and observations sound rather mundane to me. She thinks that

• "Reading in another language implies a perpetual state of growth, of possibility" (p.41)
• "reading in a foreign language is the most intimate way of reading" (p.163)

Even her views on a work's scaffolding sound familiar. What is interesting is why such a good writer in English should abandon writing it for 2 years. It's only as late as p.153 that she writes "I think that studying Italian is a flight from the long clash in my life between English and Bengali". She thinks that "No one, anywhere, assumes that I speak the languages that are part of me. ... I'm a writer: I identify myself completely with language, I work with it. And yet the wall keeps me at a distance, separates me. The wall is inevitable. It surrounds me wherever I go, so that I wonder if perhaps the wall is me" (p.142). Adding to her problems is her feeling that "a sense of imperfection has marked my life. I've been trying to improve myself forever, correct myself, because I've always felt I was a flawed person" (p.111) and "I write to feel alone. Ever since I was a child it has been a way of withdrawing, of finding myself" (p.185)

And what of her own family? Though we learn early on about how languages affected her early life, it isn't until p.136 that we learn about whether her husband and children are with her, and how they communicate.

Being a learner of Italian I was interested in what she found difficult. She makes a note of the Italian words she doesn't know - "Rereading the notebook, I notice certain words that I have to write more than once, that resist my memory. Simple but stubborn (fruscio, schianto, arguto, broncio" (p.49). I have a similar issue with some words. The translation seemed fine to me though on p.222 "uno scacco matto" is translated as "a dead-end", which may be correct but it's a surprise, because literally it means "checkmate".

Other reviews

• Joseph Luzzi
• Tessa Hadley (I’m not so sure about the style in In Other Words, at least as it is rendered in translation (I can just about read the Italian, but can’t judge it). Sometimes its abruptness just feels blunt ... Lahiri’s book feels starved of actual experiences of Italy, or reflections on how that language gives form to its different world.)

"Interpreter of Maladies" by Jhumpa Lahiri (Flamingo 2000)

The stories have various settings - sometimes the setting's India, sometimes the focus is on Indians living in the USA, and sometimes a WASPy American in the States comes across Indians. Stories are well-crafted and plots are clearly delineated with contrasting characters and signposted resolutions.

In "A Temporary Matter" a couple begin to share secrets in the dark during some scheduled power-cuts. When the power-cuts are over, the woman announces that she's leaving. Here's the final paragraph - Shukumar stood up and stacked his plate on top of hers. He carried the plates to the sink, but instead of running the tap he looked out the window. Outside the evening was still warm, and the Bradfords were walking arm in arm. As he watched the couple the room went dark, and he spun around. Shoba had turned the lights off. She came back to the table and sat down, and after a moment Shukumar joined her. They wept together, for the things they now knew. - the contrast of the couples, the symbolism of the dark.

In "When Mr. Pirzada came to dine" the narrator is 10 year old Lilia, living in the States. Her parents are Indian. Mr. Pirzada often visits. His wife and 7 daughters are in war-torn Pakistan. It's Halloween, and he's helping Lilia to carve a pumpkin. Hearing bad news from Pakistan on the TV his knife slips. He's mortified. Lilia's father cuts an open astonished mouth to hide the mistake. Lilia gets ready to knock on doors. It's her first time. Mr. Pirzada fears for her safety but Lilia's ready

"Don't worry," I said. It was the first time I had uttered those words to Mr. Pirzada, two simple words I had tried but failed to tell him for weeks, had said only in my prayers. It shamed me now that I had said them for my own sake" (p.38)

In January, the war over, he returns to Pakistan. They hear nothing for a while, then discover that all's ok. The story ends with

Since January, each night before bed, I had continued to eat, for the sake of Mr. Pirzada's family, a piece of candy I had saved from Halloween. That night there was no need to. Eventually, I threw them away. (p.42)

In "Interpreter of Maladies" a wife reveals a secret to Mr Kapasi who she's never met before. On p.63 there's

" ... I could tell you stories, Mr. Kapasi" As a result of spending all her time in college with Raj, she continued, she did not make many close friends

This passage of reported speech lasts a page. Until this point Mr. Kapasi has been the PoV focus. In this passage though, we get more than a summary of conversation; the PoV changes.

In "Sexy" Miranda, a WASPy woman, is having an affair with a married Indian man. In a whispering gallery he whispers "You're sexy" to her. She hears, though they're 30 feet apart. Later she spends an afternoon with a boy whose Indian father left his mother for a younger, white woman. The boy sketches her with wax crayons, says "You're sexy", explaining that "It means loving someone you don't know ... That's what my father did". He talks about his mother. Miranda decides to end the affair.

I got the book second-hand. "Sexy" has highlighting in 2 colours. I tried to work out the colour-coding - "Nothing you'll ever need to worry about," and he tapped her playfully on the head      had never bought anything other than a lipstick     tanned ... black hair ... knuckles ... flamingo pink shirt ... navy blue suit ... camel overcoat ... gleaming leather buttons ... pigskin gloves ... burgundy wallet ... tortoiseshell glasses     wrinkles are going to form by twenty-five. After that they just start showing     silver eyes ... skin as pale as paper ... dark and glossy ... features, too, were narrow     red tissue     grinning pig's head presiding over their conversation     buy herself things she thought a mistress should have     to an Indian restaurant     her hand moving in unfamiliar directions, stopping and turning and picking up     "You're sexy"

She's a good, reliable writer of Realism.

Other reviews

• Howard Dratch
• Susan Chacko
• Jami Edwards
• Caleb Crain (New York Times)
• Charles Taylor

"Unaccustomed Earth" by Jhumpa Lahiri (Bloomsbury, 2008)

A daughter greets her father after an absence of several months. "He had not lost weight and the hair on his head was plentiful, more so, she feared, than her own after Akash's birth, when it had fallen out in clumps ... her bathtub was still filled with shampoos that promised to stimulate scalp growth, plump the shafts. Her father looked well rested, another quality Ruma did not possess these days. She'd taken to applying concealer below her eyes ..." (p.12). The character is having thoughts at moments convenient for the author who's hoping to bury an info-dump by interleaving the information. The spell of immersion is broken by the distant clatter of a keyboard. Plotting isn't crucial to her style; mechanisms tend to be kludgey or repeated. In the title story for example, we have a visiting parent (a topic she's covered elsewhere). College life, feasts and families are never far away, and all the narrators use words similarly. The idea of the child's garden seemed a little odd - a MacGuffin as much as a grandfatherly indulgence. The use of the postcard at the end works symbolically (the child wanting it to "grow") but would the child really have taken the postcard?

Lahiri's reliable; a good read. Like a lawyer she presents paragraphs of facts when making a point, hoping to convince by sheer volume of evidence. You'll know what's important because you'll be told and shown. In particular, dialogue isn't always left to speak for itself -

• "Why?" In her son's small face she saw the disappointment she also felt.
  "Daddy's coming back tonight", she said, trying to change the subject. "Should we make a cake?" (p.57).
• "Kaushik, what about a picture?" my father suggested.
  I shook my head. I had left my camera ... at school
  "But you always have it with you" ...
  "I forgot it"...
  "I don't understand," my father said.
  "Neither do I," I replied. "You haven't wanted a picture of anything in years."
  "That's not true."
  "It is."
  We were stating facts and at the same time arguing, an argument whose depths only he and I could fully comprehend. (p.280)

For me the transparency doesn't lead to immersion because there's too little interest generated (or maybe too few types of interest). Branches in the plot can be anticipated, following well-trodden paths, and they're well separated, giving time to guess what will happen next. Emotionally I'm told what to feel. I'm more spatially than temporally engaged - objects and interiors are carefully described and India/US differences are attended to. Big journeys mean big changes - any deviation from that pattern tends to carry significance. The few similes she uses are good - "swallows like giant thumbprints swiping the sky" (p.307) is fine.

"the namesake" by Jhumpa Lahiri (Harper Perennial, 2004)

The book recounts the lives of Calcutta immigrants and offspring living in the USA, set in 1968-2000, told in the present tense. Smooth and competent, full of details, effortless transitions, and perceptual re-adjustments. Births and first dates are told in details, deaths and break-ups happen off-screen, often reported retrospectively.

Gogol's the main character - American born. His parents take him to Calcutta for long holidays. His marriage highlights the conflicts between family and academic life, between American and Indian lifestyles. His wife, born in circumstances like his, takes him to Paris where she had earlier re-invented herself, though she's conformist when mixing socially with academic friends. She called off an earlier marriage with Graham. A mutual friend tells Gogol "Don't get me wrong, Graham's a great guy. But they were too alike somehow, too intense together" (p.242), which worries Gogol though he does little about it. After little more than a year into the marriage she seeks out an affair. Gogol discovers, "And for the first time in his life, another man's name upset Gogol more than his own.", (p.283). Few opportunities are missed to comment on the suitability of people's names, especially Gogol's. This instance in particular sounds rather forced.

Later we read that "In so many ways, his family's life feels like a string of accidents ...It had started with his father's train wreck, paralyzing him at first, later inspiring him to move as far as possible ... And yet these events have formed Gogol, shaped him, determined who he is.", (p.286). Gogol's rather quiet, slow to take the initiative, and doesn't respond to all he sees, so perhaps the narrator needs to point things out. Early chapters are in the 3rd person, with his viewpoint becoming privileged. Chapter 10 is 3rd person privileged from his wife's viewpoint. Towards the end his mother summarizes her life. These other viewpoints help compensate for Gogol's quietness. I don't think we need what looks like the narrator's opinion too.

In the final chapter his widowed mother's hosting her last party in the house she's selling off. In his old room he finds the Gogol book his father had given him, and notices for the first time the inscription.

I liked the book, but there were few surprises and only towards the end (with pangs of feeling manipulated) was I emotionally engaged.

Other Reviews

• Powells