In Other Words is my second dip into the work of Jhumpa Lahiri after reading her bold asides about life and loss in Whereabouts. In Other Words is a multidimensional book not least because it includes the Italian (in which it was written). I often found myself reading her Italian (on the left-hand side of the page) as a way of testing my understanding of her Italian - to see if I had just the vaguest sense of it. Mostly, my Italian was at such a basic level that I missed the gist and found myself comparing sentences with the translations. I’d spend a year in Italy in 1989 and picked up just enough Italian to get by; rather than the interesting Italian that the far more proficient Lahiri speaks and writes. On long walks in Tuscany, I had taught my displaced children some fragments of Dante and it was to Dante we kept returning out-loud, smarrita (lost), as a way of savouring Italian - not just training our tongues and lips but of absorbing some small hint of Italian sensuality. Here, it is so right that the Italian is present; not just for comparison but as if someone was speaking into your left ear. Here, I have to say, what let the book down was the absence of Lahiri’s sense not just of sound but of that sensuous way Italian changes how you use your face and your hands and how it actually feels on your tongue and lips. In this dimension the book becomes a disappointment, despite the various metaphors Lahiri labours over to try to explain her captivation. She never explains what it is about Italian or Italy that attracts her. Why not Spanish for example?

In some curious, but probably intentional way, another important dimension of the book reflects on why anyone would write at all? We are all different but for Lahiri, ‘writing is a way of absorbing and organising life.’

If I didn’t write, if I didn’t work with words, I wouldn’t feel that I’m present on the earth.

As a compulsive journal writer, I found myself wondering about all that is unrecorded, glossed over, even ignored. Here we meet what I’ll say is the genius of Lahiri the maker: the way she can grab hold of truth as it flashes past in fugitive, evaporative thought.

A book, like a person, remans imperfect, incomplete, during its entire gestation. At the end of the gestation the person is born, then grows, but I consider a book alive only during the writing. Afterward, it least for me, it dies.

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2.5 stars

Firstly, this is a bilingual book, so it's much shorter than I realized - only about one hundred pages.

I could certainly relate to some of the author's struggle to learn a new language, but I didn't really understand her disdain for English. She spoke solely Bengali until preschool, when she was immersed in English; I get that this could be somewhat traumatic. But eventually, she masters the language and goes on to become a writer.

I also didn't see why she loves Italian more when she's so much more limited in it than in English. I'm currently in a foreign country, struggling to communicate in even the most basic way, and I know that when I can speak English again, it will taste like water in a dry land...

The essays/chapters were repetitive, all saying the same thing in slightly different words.

And weirdly, Lahiri incorporated two short stories into the already-short book.

For those who need encouragement in learning another language, this is an okay read, but certainly not the best. I would have preferred for the author to write a more detailed and nuanced memoir in English.

(Also, what was her family doing for these three years in Italy? They're barely mentioned!) ( )

I respect the author's journey into a new language much more than I enjoyed her book about this journey. There was a lot of abstract introspection about language and not very much description of her actual experiences speaking and learning Italian in Rome. ( )

After some years since reading this, I don't recall enough to discuss it. ( )

A very nice book about language and this author's position in the world.