An independent observer: Whereabouts, by Jhumpa Lahiri, reviewed

After falling in love with Italy as a young woman, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jhumpa Lahiri broke with English and began writing in Italian. Her new novel — a slim and bewitching tale of a woman at her midpoint — she wrote first in Italian and has since translated. The story is told in a series of vignettes, the lengthiest six or so pages. Each is titled with the setting — in the office, at the register, on the street — and paints an exquisite picture of a single soul moving thoughtfully about her city.

‘I don’t share my life with anyone,’ says that soul early on. She lives alone in a spartan apartment, and with only herself to worry about she never fills the fridge. She teaches, though, as she reminds us: ‘I’m here to earn a living, my heart’s not in it’. Twice a week she goes for a swim, and twice a month she gets her nails done — ‘my one indulgence’. Slight variations in her routine include tasting various dishes at the local trattoria and always choosing a different seat at the theatre. Her ‘daily meanderings’ are broken up by small pleasures, from a simple sandwich to a fleeting embrace.

The novel is tinged with melancholy; death stalks each vignette. Pedestrians on a bridge look like ‘skittish ghosts advancing in a row, obedient souls passing from one realm to another’. The narrator’s office feels ‘a bit sepulchral’ while the pool is a ‘container of clear water lacking life’. Her father, buried in a crypt at the heart of the city, died when she was 15 and her mother is in precarious health — ‘she’s nearing her end’. Since turning 45, the narrator too has become acquainted with odd afflictions and mysterious pains.