Dove mi trovo (Italian Edition)

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An internal rendering of daily events in a life, she explains what she does and what she thinks, about events, and people. Nevertheless I closed the book with a hole in my heart, as this book exudes a forlornness, an inner homelessness that no place in the world seems able to cure. I found Whereabouts rather listless, about an unnamed woman wandering and meandering around a European city.

Questo è il primo romanzo di Jhumpa Lahiri scritto in italiano, con il desiderio di oltrepassare un confine e di innestarsi in una nuova lingua letteraria, andando sempre più al largo. Quite judgemental at times and making assumptions about people they've just met, the character does well with being not able to be in good terms with anyone. The best way I can describe this book is that it reminded me of those writing exercises you do in foreign language classes, where they ask you to keep a diary and describe something you've seen or done during a particular day. I was very impressed by this reading, I didn’t really think to find pages and pages of complete loneliness and melancholy.re-read: I was curious to read Lahiri's self-translation, just to see whether I would like it us much as the original, and I can confirm that I did. And the common idea that people can only express themselves well in one language – their mother tongue. Perhaps there are some themes about isolation, the intermingling of solitude and self-fulfillment and connection, and navigating an urban landscape, through the writing dragged so I couldn’t feel much connection to the story either way. Even in those occasions where she interacts with others—who also remain unmanned and are referred to as her former lover, her friend, a professor, etc—she remains a lonely person. She's a brilliant thinker, and often captures some glittering moment of life in a way that's poetic and compelling (even in this novel the way she describes dishware, the thick ceramic juxtaposed with brittle stemware moved me).

I would say it is melancholic at times, depressing at some parts and I would say I felt too bad about the silent loneliness throughout the whole book.

Though I love Lahiri and highly recommend her short stories, I continue to struggle with her longer form narratives. Ho deciso di leggere questo libro dopo aver ascoltato Lucrezia (un'insegnante su YouTube) e la sua raccomandazione. Even if this is not said, you immediately have the feeling that the book refers to the authors’ solitary life in Rome.

In her In Other Words Lahiri clarifies she considers her writing in Italian is a flight, her linguistic metamorphosis an attempt to free herself.It was like getting this inclusive intel into this person’s life, while it is not super life changing it gets increasingly interesting. It resonates with me personally, as much like Lahiri, I grew up exposed to many languages and was most fluent in English, which was not my mother tongue, but a ‘stepmother’, to borrow her analogy from In Other Words. The unnamed narrator is a 40ish dottoressa in the local university who has consciously chosen to lead a life quite detached from intimate relationships.