Thoughts 
by Jhumpa Lahiri, Alfred A. Knopf 2021, 163 pages
Translated from Italian.
Challenge: 20 Books of Summer, TOB Summer Camp
Genre/Theme: Contemporary Lit, Woman Thinking About Life
Type/Source: Hardcover, Library
What It’s About: Our unnamed main character narrates these vignettes of her days and the places these days take her. She excels at solitude.
“The tenderness he sets aside for me is enough.“
Her father was stingy, stingy at love and felt his family was a burden. Her mother never found her footing and took it out on the daughter. Each chapter seemed to have powerful last lines.
I mourned those wasted tickets, and that trip never taken, more than I mourned for you.
Thoughts: Provocatively written. Is provocative too strong a word? I could not stop reading; it was an insistent little book. It “evok[ed my] interest, attention, or and admiration in a powerfully irresistible way.” (the definition of compelling.)
Disoriented, lost, at sea, at odds, astray, bewildered, confused, uprooted, turned around.
I’m related to these related terms. These words are my abode, my only foothold.
(from Nowhere, page 153)
Rating: Four slices of pie. No pie mentioned. However, there is a chapter that mentions pastry often and another had me searching for cat’s tongue cookies.
We say goodbye, separate. Then we, too, become two shadows projected onto the wall: a routine spectacle, impossible to capture.
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Care’s Books and Pie also known as and originally created as Care’s Online Book Club. All rights reserved. This post was originally posted by Care. It should not be reproduced without express written permission.
Care's Books and Pie 
“Insistent little book” – a perfect description! Once I got into the flow, I couldn’t put it down either.
I think we were reading this on the same day!
Cat tongue cookies look suspiciously like ladyfingers. Same cookie, different name?
Yes, and/or they look like Madeleine cookies? which reminds me… tho. Hmmm, Tiramisu is made with lady fingers and this is Italian. might be different ingredients.
LOL – copied this from my google query:
Ladyfingers are served as an accompaniment to ice cream and are an integral part of several classic desserts, including tiramisu and gâteau Malakoff. … Ladyfinger cookies are similar in shape to cat’s-tongue cookies ( The name lady’s fingers is also used for the vegetable okra.
I learned something today.
Very interesting!
I want to read this!
Yes, you DO!