The press for Roman Stories was very clear to mention that this collection of stories was written by Jhumpa Lahiri in Italian, and most were translated into English by Lahiri herself, retaining the precise, sometimes distant language that she writes with in English.
I’m a huge fan of Lahiri. Interpreter of Maladies is an all-time classic collection and two of her novels rank among my all-time favourites. She writes about alienation, emigration and family conflict as well as anyone, but after two story collections and three novels, the path is pretty well-trod.
That’s not to say that there are no excellent stories here. When Lahiri is on, she’s as good as it gets. Her multilingualism seems to give her a gift for unusual turns of phrase, and her detached writing style lets her write sentences that hit like a hammer.
“Do you also have a son?”
“Yes. He lives abroad.”
“So you’ll understand.”
“Understand what?”
“Today I brushed up against the worst thing that could possibly happen.”
Lahiri’s narrators vary in age, gender and circumstance, but they all live in Rome and they’re all from somewhere else. Some are immigrants, some are visitors, some are children of them. These stories cover similar themes to her prior collections — what it means to be at home, alienation, racism and the pain of being separated from family, and the ease with which outsiders recognize each other.
The tragic and painful “Well-Lit House” is narrated by an immigrant who qualifies for subsidized housing for his growing family – but as his xenophobic neighbours organize, his lovely little apartment slowly becomes untenable.
In “P’s Parties”, the narrator slowly contends with his adulterous feelings. In “The Delivery”, an immigrant woman is shot with a pellet gun so much that her x-rays look like “a series of lights in a town from a hilltop at night.”
As I write this a couple of weeks after finishing the book, the most memorable story is “The Procession”. The story involves a couple on vacation in an Airbnb in Rome – there’s incredible tension in the story from the first word, and the slow reveal of the source of that tension is masterful.
Her themes are familiar, and a couple stories in this collection may evoke a false sense of déja vu for devotees. It did for me. I don’t think Roman Stories is Lahiri’s best collection, but more Lahiri is always a net positive.
