I like very much what Jhumpa Lahiri has done in Whereabouts, building a portrait of a woman in forty-six vignettes, each not much more than a few pages long. Every short scene frames and focuses the narrator, building her character much like a movie might, taking the reader step by step and deeper and deeper into her solitude. The challenge the novelist sets herself is an ambitious one because each short chapter invites close, separate examination much like a collection of short stories might. The brevity somehow encourages close scrutiny, and that sometimes exposes an occasional flaw in the brilliance and a certain unevenness in the overall texture of the novel. No matter. This is an accomplished and subtly accretive study of urban isolation that cleverly sedates you and entangles you in a person’s inner life.