Book Review for Jhumpa Lahiri’s Whereabouts!

Posted On May 12, 2021

Hi Readers! Lately I was not able to read any book. I started something & kept it away only to start something else & keep that away. That is why, I decided to take a reading hiatus. (Ouch! I know.) This is the first time I did this. Because I wasn’t forcing myself to read, I somehow got the freedom to just be & let the reader in me relax for some time, no guilt attached. (Or maybe some guilt attached.) Two days into this & I hear about Jhumpa Lahiri’s new novel ‘Whereabouts’. Obviously, I couldn’t resist, so I ordered the book which help awaken the reader in me! Now, I am back on track with reading, all thanks to Jhumpa Lahiri! I had read Interpreter of Maladies & Unaccustomed Earth, but reading Whereabouts was an entirely different & enriching experience. 

Whereabouts, as the title suggests, is a woman’s whereabouts, such as, on the street, in the office, in my head, in august, on vacation, at the coffee bar & so on. Each of the chapter is not more than 4 pages & the book itself is only 176 pages. It contains a new person in almost every one, along with a point of view & imaginative story unlike I have read anywhere.  

~~GOODREADS DESCRIPTION~~ 

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 the first novel she has written 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. 

~~THOUGHTS~~

When I first started reading this book, I was immediately obsessed with the writing style. Having read Jhumpa Lahiri before, this was a sweet surprise. Usually, I don’t bode well with this kind of writing style, but the way in which it gels with the faintness of a story, the hidden messages & the quirky whereabouts, made me love it all the more. I have never been more at peace while reading a book than I was with Whereabouts.  

It made me wonder about the possibilities of life. 

It inspired me to grab a pen & write a story. 

It gave me the gift of solitude & of feeling at peace. 

Whereabouts is a treasure box of untethered creativity & a wondrous flooding of imagination. Jhumpa Lahiri has taken the ordinary & made it extraordinary. Making the monotonous so beautifully wonderful is an art & Jhumpa Lahiri has made it all seem so simple, that it leaves me baffled. 

Reading Whereabouts is like observing an overwhelming piece of art one at a time & praising it in parts, because if I go for the entire picture, I will be speechless. After reading this book, I have first-hand come upon the power of literature. The way it can make you feel things completely unrelated to your life & also which is exactly your life. The book is the summation of all the missed opportunities, lost loves, tenuous relationships, fake smiles, but also a celebration of the oncoming paths, a new life with new moments & new people & a new you. 

Without a sold plot, memorable characters or a purpose, this book has somehow achieved that edge of raw simplicity where every reader loves to dwell. I have rated Jhumpa Lahiri’s ‘Whereabouts’ at 4.5/5 stars! I will definitely recommend reading this book.

Until next time,