Whereabouts by Jhumpa Lahiri

This is a sparse novella, a collection of small stories that ends up being not very long in any direction. The chapters are short and they don't add up to much in length. The thing that is maybe most notable about them, other than are they thinly memoirs rather than actual fiction, is that the Bengali author who has written to much acclaim in English, is now writing exclusively in Italian. She has translated the book herself (which must be a bit of a trip to do so, moving from one acquired tongue to another), but apparently no longer writes in English. The novel portrays the lonely existence, in an unnamed place, of an unnamed narrator. We know she’s a woman and, in a rare concession to biographical detail, a university teacher, in her mid-40s. She has virtually no family, no relationship, just friends, who are also nameless and thinly characterized, with an element of projection: a married neighbor is, to her mind, ready to have an affair with her, while a female friend must, she imagines, be bored of marriage. And on it goes, wandering as one's mind does.