And yet the events of the novel, such as they are-micro-incidents like a jaunt to buy theater tickets, an outburst at a dinner party, an eavesdropping session while dining at a restaurant-are not culturally or geographically specific they could occur almost anywhere, in any modern city. The narrative unfolds in a plotless series of vignettes that Lahiri marks by where (and occasionally when) they occur: “In the Pool,” In the Hotel,” “At the Cash Register,” “In Bed,” “In August.” These section headings, along with the title, deliberately underscore the idea of place. Dalloway and shares contemporary DNA with other elliptical books about women in midlife, like Rachel Cusk’s Second Place, and Sigrid Nunez’s The Friend and more recent What Are You Going Through. (The tipoff she’s in Italy are the many mentions of piazzas.) The book, which Lahiri wrote and published in Italian before translating it into English herself, is an obvious heir to Mrs. Whereabouts i s a slim, spare chronicle of a year in the life of an unnamed middle-aged woman in an unnamed Italian city. Press play to hear a narrated version of this story, presented by AudioHopper. Existential questions of midlife hover over Whereabouts, the new novel by Jhumpa Lahiri : What happens when life’s big yawning choices have all been settled? What defines an existence in which someone has renounced marriage and children and even deeply meaningful work, especially if that someone is a woman?
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |