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Loading... Whereabouts: A novel (edition 2021)by Jhumpa Lahiri (Author)
Work InformationWhereabouts by Jhumpa Lahiri
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. Essays or thought pieces working together as a novel of a life. Lovely, engaging in the translation and attention to language and evocation of a place. ( ) Whereabouts by Jhumpa Lahiri is a lovely little book, even if the title feels somewhat mistranslated. I'd prefer something more literal such as, Where I find myself. It's a collection of asides about life and loss in a voice that makes me want to write down observations just like she does. But I've a suspicion that such effortlessness writing is not as easy as it appears. Not all the pieces work in the subtle way that seems to suggest a quiet but profound insight or that the pieces will knit together into a narrative. For example the piece entitled In the Shade seems somewhat laboured. But mostly they propel the reader towards some kind of conclusion which ultimately comes with a clearing away. Is there any place we are not moving through? Disorientated, lost, at sea, at odds, astray, adrift, bewildered, confused, uprooted, turned around. I’m related to these related terms. These words are my abode, my only foothold. I did end up restarting this a bunch of times but once I started I really connected with it. I am becoming a Jhumpa Lahiri fan and this quietly insinuated itself into my reading life. Really it is only a series of vingettes but it created a mood and I felt so comfortable with the narrator and her internal dialouge. Need to read more by her. Short audiobook,it didn't speak much to me. The characters seemed plain,uninteresting, the plot unexisting,and there was no development. I get that it is supposed to be a snapshop of this character's routine,but you know what? her routine is boring. Such a shame because I really really really liked her collection of short stories: The Interpreter of Maladies Whereabouts drifted between being contemplative/introspective and dry/draining. I think it captures being in a period of stasis quite effectively, though the vignette format it uses felt very hit-or-miss in my opinion. I could see this one not being everyone's vibe. I appreciate what it was going for, but for my tastes I would have preferred a bit more narrative glue. no reviews | add a review
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"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"-- No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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