RaveLos Angeles Review of BooksWhereabouts is a beautiful novel by Jhumpa Lahiri, but it wasn’t written by the same Jhumpa Lahiri. This is a book by a different writer, a different woman. And it displays, in place of all that she has given up, an incredible power ... a vivid portrait of a middle-aged, single woman who sometimes dreads being by herself...and at other times dreads the company of others ... ordinary circumstances are described as extraordinary events. One stunning passage chronicles an errand to a favorite stationery store, where the narrator stocks up on supplies ... she wields her storytelling gifts in astonishing ways. By sidestepping a traditional plot, Lahiri is free to explore everyday rituals through fragments that emphasize voice over action ... These dueling contradictions have always been Lahiri’s themes, but never before have they been expressed with such disquieting intimacy ... Lahiri is a fearless writer. She renders the details of her characters’ lives with dazzling precision, illuminating not only their hearts and minds, but their souls as well. It takes a kind of conjuring to write about people the way Lahiri does—deliberate yet emotional, unguarded yet mysterious, haunted by the burdens of life yet rarely without a secret hope for the future ... in Italian, she doesn’t deny her readers anything. She gives us even more of herself.
