Dove mi trovo (Italian Edition)

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The unnamed narrator is a 40ish dottoressa in the local university who has consciously chosen to lead a life quite detached from intimate relationships. I think what I love about this book is that there is an undercurrent of loneliness but never in a depressing way. Her father’s untimely death has left her bereft but she is not able to forgive him for not protecting her from her mother’s rages and cries out near his crypt: “ …but that magma never touched you, you’d already built yourself an enclosure that was taller and thicker than the marble that encases you now. I thought of how, like the narrator, we crave anonymity and blend in with the crowd but yet we shrink from total solitude. And when I wake up in the middle of the night, always at the same time, it’s the absolute silence that interrupts my sleep.

She has also moved back to the US, coming out a little, if not wholly, out of her self-imposed linguistic exile. Albania, Algeria, American Samoa, Andorra, Angola, Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Armenia, Aruba, Australia, Austria, Bahamas, Bahrain, Barbados, Belgium, Belize, Benin, Bermuda, Bhutan, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Botswana, Brazil, British Virgin Islands, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cambodia, Cameroon, Cape Verde Islands, Cayman Islands, Central African Republic, Chad, Chile, China, Colombia, Comoros, Cook Islands, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Côte d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast), Democratic Republic of the Congo, Denmark, Djibouti, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Estonia, Ethiopia, Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas), Finland, France, French Guiana, French Polynesia, Gabon Republic, Gambia, Germany, Ghana, Gibraltar, Greece, Greenland, Grenada, Guadeloupe, Guam, Guatemala, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Jordan, Kenya, Kiribati, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Latvia, Lebanon, Lesotho, Liberia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macau, Macedonia, Madagascar, Malawi, Malaysia, Mali, Malta, Marshall Islands, Martinique, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mayotte, Mexico, Micronesia, Moldova, Monaco, Mongolia, Montenegro, Montserrat, Morocco, Namibia, Nepal, Netherlands, Netherlands Antilles, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Niger, Niue, Norway, Oman, Pakistan, Palau, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Qatar, Republic of Croatia, Republic of the Congo, Reunion, Romania, Saint Helena, Saint Kitts-Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, San Marino, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Serbia, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, Solomon Islands, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sri Lanka, Suriname, Svalbard and Jan Mayen, Swaziland, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Thailand, Togo, Tonga, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Turks and Caicos Islands, Tuvalu, Uganda, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, Vanuatu, Vatican City State, Venezuela, Virgin Islands (U. Like a poem, every word has weight and meaning here; it forces you to stop and listen, to reflect deeply. I was mostly left with this agonizing question: Will we never get to read another Interpreter of Maladies or Unaccustomed Earth?

Speaking of the Italian language, the fact that there are so many really short chapters each with its own story makes it a very good read for students of Italian. The joys of being alone and mental tranquillity when she is on her own, writing while sitting in the sun on the balcony of her flat are larded with her observations of others from her outsider’s point of view, contemplating what is and what could have been.

I admire her tenacity in immersing herself in the Italian culture and language, writing this novel in Italian, and translating it into English.

A voice that discloses more fragility that the woman is willing to acknowledge, a voice that speaks of solitude and loneliness – a loneliness that is particularly candid and often aching when the middle-aged narrator is with and among others, her friends, her mother, an ex-lover, at a party or in a bar. Unfortunately Whereabouts lacked the elements of her work I love the most, namely her rich characterization and understated yet powerful prose.

To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average.In "Dove mi trovo", her first novel written in Italian, Jhumpa Lahiri tells the story of a woman who turns her solitude into a profession. While I can't say whether Lahiri always articulated phrases like an Italian would, I didn't notice any Englishism on her part.