A WOMAN WALKS alone through an Italian city. She sits in the piazza and basks in the sun. Gradually, the reader comes to know this lonely flaneuse-her troubled past, hidden neuroses and conflicting urges. In "Whereabouts", Jhumpa Lahiri's latest book, she and her nameless narrator explore the inevitability of movement and change, uncomfortable truths and unexpected joys. In Ms Lahiri's brief chapters-some only a page long, with equally laconic headings such as "In the office", "On the street" and "In the hotel"-the narrator, a writer and teacher, advances through the seasons, working, eating, swimming, travelling, visiting her mother and people-watching. She craves familiarity but feels compelled to "push past the barrier of my life". This restlessness leads to a startling perception: "I'm me and also someone else."
展开▼
