So not what I expected! Very different very interesting probably not for every reader but the ones that get it will absolutely get it and eat it up!

A short book filled with light and insight from one of the finest writers to take up the idea of claiming your own place, however you got there.

I found this to be a lovely book. The vignette chapters were beautiful meditations on life. It follows the daily meanderings of an Italian professor. In middle age, she lives alone, haunted by a childhood fraught with cold interactions with her mother. Despite a less than stellar childhood, she often sees the beauty in the small things in life. I recommend this book.

The one positive about this book is that it was short, so It didn't have to hold my attention for long, because it certainly did not hold my attention. This book was literally about nothing. I could not possibly have been more bored. I had read another Lahiri book a couple years ago and it was slow, but at least it had a plot. This just didn't. The narrator goes to some coffee shops and restaurants and museums and watches random people, watches her friends argue, finds a dead animal, visits her mother, almost misses a train....none of it really has much to do with the rest. There is a common thread about the loss of the narrators father through some of the stories that is minorly interesting, but the rest just feels completely irrelevant.

This insightful, quiet book tightrope walks across the line between bleak and hopeful. The reading experience is reminiscent of sitting in a café on a rainy afternoon and people watching while reflecting on the “could have beens” of life.

I could not love this book despite being prepared for this to be different from Lahiri's usual kind of fiction. The character's emotional see-saw just didn't take me with them. Lahiri is a master of the sharply-observed detail, however. And, for that alone, this book is a masterclass worth reading.

This book felt like a collection of vignettes or small essays rather than a novel. It wasn't compelling like some of Lahiri's other works, but I always admire her prose and her keen eye for human character and details of scenery.

Whereabout by Jhumpa Lahiri is a throughly engrossing novel about a woman's every day life. Lahiiri has taken what could be seen as the mundane activities of every day life and injected them with emotion and meaning. We follow the main character, who remains nameless the entire novel, through her thoughts and feelings as she lives her life. She is extremely insightful and draws the reader in easily. You learn of her solitude and loneliness, and at first it appears she is a passive participant in her own life. As the novel progresses, however, you realize that the routine and solitude of her life are of her own design. She is in charge of her own story.
The book is beautifully written and a joy to read. You are drawn into both the physical and emotional spaces that the woman inhabits. It is a book that you can read in a weekend, but will stay with you for a very long time.

This was accomplished, idiosyncratic, interesting, and all too brief. it was very human. I just enjoyed it so much. I would like to see how readers receive it but suspect it will be loved.

Incredible short stories, snippets of Lahiri’s life in the most telling, intimate, yet completely removed sort of way. Absolutely fantastic.

I really adore Jhumpa Lahiri, but I found this to be slow, despite her beautiful writing. I'm not really a fan of short stories, and this felt like neverending short stories.

Loved the short snippets of stories that added up as you went along. Kept you interested and wondering about the characters as you tried to put the pieces together.

I was given a copy of this book by the publisher in exchange for an honest review. While the style of this book was not my favorite, I prefer a more connected and fluid story, I did find the essence of it thought provoking..

Interesting. A well respected author and professor-fluent in Bengali and English (raised in RI) moved to Italy , studied and mastered Italian.
The book was originally written in Italian( DOVE MI TROVO) and she herself translated it into English-a phenomenal accomplishment in and of itself.Rather than a novel, it is a series of vignettes-sometimes only 2/3 pages about her daily life. Through these we see past aspects of her life( difficult relationships with parents for example) and her present daily life Her joy and comfort in simple daily pleasures, her independence, her relationships with nature and other cohorts etc.
It is beautifully written, and I read several sections multiple times.I am sure all will agree it is well written, but equally sure that many readers will have different interpretations. Personally, I saw a woman who at many times felt “ uncomfortable in her own skin”, at times lonely and isolated. The book left me with one overwhelming emotion-sadness. As I said above, others will interpret it completely differently-that’s what makes reading a joy!!

As much as I love everything Lahiri has written, this one was a letdown. I didn't connect with the character like I have in her previous novels and short fiction. There may have been something loss from it being written in Italian (which is a new language for her) and then translated back into English, I'm not sure, I just didn't enjoy it like I have her previous titles.

Whereabouts by Jhumpa Lahiri (review by Jode Millman)

A decade ago, Pulitzer Prize winner Jhumpa Lahiri and her family became expats living in Rome, Italy, and during that time, she immersed herself in the unfamiliar culture, including writing in Italian. For most people, stepping outside their comfort zone can be difficult, stressful and even painful. Lahiri, on the other hand, makes navigating uncharted territory seem effortless. At least, that’s the impression readers may leave with after reading her latest novel, Whereabouts (Knopf), which is the first Lahiri has written in Italian and then translated into English. She has done a remarkable job in capturing the essence of her adopted tongue and country. The narrative and her turns of phrase feel as authentic and beautiful as if we were reading the original Italian.

In Whereabouts, the reader follows the unnamed narrator as she navigates her banal daily life. Her fears, joys and observations are revealed through short vignettes as she goes to the market, the seaside, on vacation with friends, and as she visits her aging mother and speaks on the phone. Through these snapshots, we discover superficial facts about her life: she lives in Italy and is an independent, 45-year-old college professor. She is single, yet married, or emotionally chained, to the city where she has lived her entire life.

Like the narrator, the locations and other characters mentioned in the book are unnamed, representing her emotional detachment from them. Names are only assigned to physical objects. The narrator admits she is frugal, but purchasing an agenda each January from her favorite stationary shop or knick-knacks from the man downstairs seem to bring her endless joy. It’s as if consumerism is the only aspect of her life left to her absolute control. Ironically, she mocks her mother’s attachment to a long-lost ring. Yet, it is the narrator’s objects, rather than her experiences, that represent her connection to the people around her and her memories.

While Lahiri’s literary themes of alienation and loss persist throughout Whereabouts, the author experiments with a new genre of storytelling that is more personal than anything she has written before. The chapters are short, yet intimate, as though we are reading the narrator’s journal. She is not shy about exposing her lust for her friend’s husband, her resentment of her parents or her fears about accepting a fellowship abroad. She shares the bliss of eating a sandwich in the piazza on a sunny afternoon, the alienation of being alone at a christening, and her fascination with watching the sunrise from the roof of her apartment. The narrator finds beauty in art, literature and nature, but like most of Lahiri’s characters, she struggles to establish her place in the world.

Whereabouts is one big jigsaw puzzle. Each chapter signifies another piece of the narrator; its entirety creating the plot of her life. Unlike most novels where readers begin at Part A and end at Part Z, Whereabouts is circular. The narrator is introduced to the reader on a walk around her beloved neighborhood, and the story cycles through her life by season — winter, spring, summer and fall — and then begins over and over again. She is caught in a repetitive trap of her own making, but when she finally realizes the monotony of her existence, she boldly summons the courage to act. The reader becomes her cheerleader, rooting for her to abandon her self-imposed unhappiness and boredom and to strike out into the world.

I’ve long admired Lahiri’s beautifully lyrical tales of being an outsider (The Namesake, Lowlands, Interpreter of Maladies), and her ability to paint with words to capture the exotic sights, smells and sounds of contemporary Calcutta. In Whereabouts, Lahiri’s magical language is as engaging as ever. Whether she’s describing the locals’ August exodus from her city (“it wastes away like an old woman who was once a stunning beauty before shutting down completely”), the sunrise (“the sphere, so precise at the start, emerges, perfectly round, like an egg yolk that then slips from its shell”), or the difference between the sky and the sea (“The sky, unlike the sea, never holds to the people that pass through it. The sky contains our spirit, it doesn’t care”), Lahiri’s words are stunning, breathtaking poetry.

In Whereabouts, we witness Lahiri breaking free from her literary traditions and tackling a new form of writing. Her risks mirror those of her protagonist, making us wonder whether Lahiri has summoned her own life as inspiration for her narrator’s experiences. In the end, we are glad the unnamed narrator, now our friend and confidant, has passed through our lives. We wish her well, and we are grateful to the author for the introduction.

This is a beautifully written introspective book that reads like a personal journal. I found I was constantly having to separate the character from the author because it was such a personal journey.

Another masterpiece by the wonderful Jhumpa Lahiri. Amazing that she wrote this in Italian! Wonderful and readable accomplishment, sure to be popular.

Whereabouts is a pastiche of a novel. Unfortunately, for me, the elegant prose is unable to overcome the loose character development and the distinct lack of forward momentum in the plot. I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the “train” novel, you know, the Agatha Christie style whodunit or the road trip where towns are a blur out the window; there is no murder or detective or much traveling at all, but Jhumpa Lahiri treats each brief chapter like a vignette of a passing depot, blurred out the window.

Lahiri is an author that has intrigued me for many years; once, while waiting for a movie to start I wandered into a bookstore and picked up Interpreter of Maladies. I managed to finish the first story, about an Indian couple living in Boston, before show time but I was hooked by the beauty and simplicity of her sentences. I only returned last month to Interpreter of Maladies and was...disappointed in the collection. There are certainly high moments; the title story for one and the story about the newlyweds, but overall, I felt a certain letdown in a book I had built up in my head for such a long time. Now, that fault rests with me, but some of that hype had translated into Lahiri’s new book, Whereabouts, and I was thrilled to secure an ARC. The book is short, incredibly so, and my already lowered expectations after Interpreter of Maladies became ever more tempered.

We follow a nameless narrator in a nameless town. We can surmise it is a medium-sized city in Italy and a small cast of equally unnamed characters begins to populate the fringes of the book. Our author is a teacher at an upper-level school, but we don’t ever see into the class or her interactions with students. We see snippets of the narrator’s life in various locations “At the Store”, “At Home”, “In My Mind”, etc. Certain threads begin to run together, for example, the running story of a platonic married male friend with several children and the narrator’s interior monologue about if events had transpired differently, their relationship might have evolved into something more intimate. But, like the narrator, Lahiri keeps everything at least an arms length away. What this translates to, ultimately, is a work of fiction (possibly creative non-fiction) that is entirely style over substance. Lahiri is a genius, and this is the time of actionless, plotless meandering that only proven authors can even think of publishing. As always with seminal authors, even in their weaker work, there are exceptional moments, in a particular paragraph or even a quick metaphor, where they are able to drill down at the human condition and stop the reader in their tracks. There are definitely a handful of those peppered throughout this book.

Now, the fact must be addressed that Lahiri did not write this book in English (the language she is originally known for and the language in which I read the book). Most people familiar with the comings and goings of the literary world will be aware that for the last ten years, Lahiri has been engaging in a public love affair with the Italian language. She has written books in parallel English and Italian and translated stories from Italian to English. This shouldn’t come as a surprise for an author whose Pulitzer Prize winning debut was title, literally, Interpreter of Maladies. This is where part of her genius title kicks in, because I don’t know of any other author with her level of success that writes with such talent and fluency in multiple languages. It’s a fascinating experiment, to be sure, and I would say it hits the marks its “supposed” to or achieves what is “required”. Whereabouts, originally written in Italian, translated to the original language of the author by the author, is an exercise in words and writing that is quite unique. All that being said, the actual contents of plot and character take a back seat to this first and foremost goal. If you are a Lahiri fan, a fan of ‘literary fiction’ (and I mean literary, in the way of pushing the genre to new forms, not popular highly-grade fiction such as All the Light We Cannot See or The Goldfinch) then this book will be of interest to you. If you’re looking to get lost in a story, I would give it a pass. Alternatively, if you’re looking to sound smart at dinner parties, it’s only 160 pages.

This book is nothing like Lahiri's other fiction and still shows that she's the best writer of her generation. I'm sad that I've already read it and now have to wait again.