Whereabouts by Jhumpa Lahiri: book review

Whereabouts (2018) is set in a city in contemporary times over the course of one year.

There are few characters, for it is a self-reflective narrative, in the first person, by one single young woman. There are parents, work colleagues, girl friends, men friends, a situationship, people at the swimming pool, cafes, and parks, but they are background wallpaper and sidewalk milestones, and never developed into much more than a passing mention. That’s because the young woman doesn’t fit in anywhere.

She is neither confdient, nor timid – merely drifting and thinking, detached and estranged, unsure and uncertain about her future. Solitary and, for the most part, static.

The saddest sections are her visits to her parents. Disconnected, disinterested, dead.

But then, she takes a leap forward – at least in her thoughts and her preparations. She now knows that she is on the verge of a grand transformation - one that will propel her permanently forward into an unknown future, but one that is full of potential.

This brief book is an easy-to-read story of statis and movement, in a quiet pace, like the rocking and swaying of a train journey as life passes on the other side of the window.

MARTINA NICOLLS

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MARTINA NICOLLS is an international human rights-based consultant in education, healing and wellbeing, peace and stabilization, foreign aid audits and evaluations, and the author of: The Paris Residences of James Joyce (2020), Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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