Jhumpa Lahiri
FICTION Lahiri Jhumpa
Fiction
"A marvelous new novel from the Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Lowland and Interpreter of Maladies--her first in nearly a decade. Exuberance and dread, attachment and estrangement: in this novel, Jhumpa Lahiri stretches her themes to the limit. The woman at the center wavers between stasis and movement, between the need to belong and the refusal to form lasting ties. The city she calls home, an engaging backdrop to her days, acts as a confidant: the sidewalks around her house, parks, bridges, piazzas, streets, stores, coffee bars. We follow her to the pool she frequents and to the train station that sometimes leads her to her mother, mired in a desperate solitude after her father's untimely death. In addition to colleagues at work, where she never quite feels at ease, she has girl friends, guy friends, and "him," a shadow who both consoles and unsettles her. But in the arc of a year, as one season gives way to the next, transformation awaits. One day at the sea, both overwhelmed and replenished by the sun's vital heat, her perspective will change. This is Jhumpa Lahiri's first novel she wrote in Italian and translated into English. It brims with the impulse to cross barriers. By grafting herself onto a new literary language, Lahiri has pushed herself to a new level of artistic achievement"--
It's always fascinating to me when authors learn a language and create new literary works in their new tongue. In this book Lahiri, born to Bengali parents and immersed in English as a child, moved to Italy as an adult to learn yet a third language. Whereabouts; a frameless, semi-plotless novel written in Italian and translated back to English by Lahiri is a story that follows a woman in the middle of her life's journey and, in succinct chapters describes among other things a year of her living, loving and losing. The author's language is sparse, pared down and distilled completely to only what is necessary. Her observational insights and metaphors are astute and deep. I listened to the audiobook while meandering around and while unlike anything she's written before, this is an introspective and contemplative read I would recommend. -Victoria