I ask myself, "How many meals behind those beaten up forks and knives?"
Jhumpa Lahiri's latest novel, Whereabouts, is life written in vignettes. The meticulous yet obvious observation that the protagonist of the book makes, offers a sharp realisation of how conveniently we don't. She lives in a city in Italy, that is carefully ideated through the words that Lahiri employs to draw a picture of who the protagonist. The piazza, trattoria, the changing seasons, all conjure a reticent space that is familiar yet unknown. But, the fact that we never really come to the know the name of the protagonist, where she lives are inconsequential. You already know her too deeply, too well.
Lahiri questions the inexplicable thoughts that we run away from, that we shudder to hold for too long, that we are too quick to answer. In Whereabout, this mid-40s, single woman, who lives by herself, is comfortable with her discomforting thoughts. She doesn't jostle with it. Even at the therapist's, she knows that answers don't lie by the couch. Her relationship with her mother, neighbour, ex-lover, friend, friend's husband, the professor at the conference, are all poignant reminders of the essence of life lost between major events. It is in these precise moments, the book leaves its impact.
I am seized by Lahiri's writing, like one is after witnessing a new bolt of lightning in the sky. It arrives without notice, gone before you could watch it appear in the sky, you miss it but you know it was phenomenal. Whereabouts does that to you. A quick read, you near the end of the book, realising something like this will not come again for a long time.
Lahiri's protagonist does not cajole you with her wisdom, rather makes you think further of the inadequacy of paying attention and its consequences one has to bear. The biggest being, waiting for the moment to happen. "Solitude demands a precise assessment of time." She notes that when spending some time at a friend's place by the country. You make a note of that, realising that this is what every woman has been doing, around the world, whenever she has been on her own.
If there is one thing that the protagonist does evocatively well, is never lie to herself. We are often far bigger liars of your lives to ourselves than we admit. But she isn't. She stays with the shock of living, and lets her world surprise her, disappoint her, even convince her, she is alone.
There's a passage in the book that I will never forget, when she goes for a swim at a pool. As she emerges from it, she realises how much its water carries people's grief, their losses and tragedies. "The water's contaminated", she realises. And her body now carries that grief, that heartache too. Just like the new pains, others' lives leave an imprint on her body, and she will pass it on every inch of space she inhabits. Maybe that is what living is all about. It exists in the whereabouts.
The literary heights achieved by Lahiri in Whereabouts cannot be encapsulated in a 500-word review by an over-worked, emerging writer, as her long day closes for another almost identical corporate work-day. My advice, read it slowly, allow it to listen to your own thoughts and pay attention to your world.