Via Justine De fant

Roman Stories

By Jhumpa Lahiri

5/5 Stars

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 5 out of 5.

I am not usually a fan of short stories, but I am a fan of Jhumpa Lahiri and of this striking collection of lives that are so beautifully cataloged that they can’t be fictitious. Despite having read or heard these same stories in one iteration or another—in other books or gossip or passing conversations I was never supposed to hear—they still gripped me with their reality and with Lahiri’s gift for minimalist language.

It’s hard to sum up in so many words what Roman Stories is about, but in one word, it’s universal. In many… Well, here’s my meager attempt:

Grief.

“Get a hold of yourself. There’s nothing waiting for you in that room. Nothing but the grief already inside you.”

“The Procession”

Desire. Lust. Unrequited Love.

“The idea appealed to me: a relationship punctuated with gaps; a fixed date, ours alone, in the middle of the party.”

“P’s Parties”

Discrimination. Marriage. Resentment. Womanhood and nostalgia.

“And he’ll think, with a certain melancholy, when he watches the water clamber up the shore, that every effort, and even every pleasure in life, every goal that’s reached and achieved, every recollection, lasts only for an instant, just like the water that throws itself onto the beach, leaving a spontaneous imprint whose wavering contours, like the line drawn by a heart monitor, are never quite the same.”

“The Steps”

Infidelity. Youth.

“These kids don’t bother me. They chat late into the night, in the dark, seated on the two steps outside the store or leaning against a parked car. They’re like cats or insects that come out only at night, that meet up and colonize the edges of the streets. They prowl in the dark, fueled by lust. I hear their voices, their secret exchanges, but all the words meld together. I hear occasional laughter and the venting of fumbling, precious desires that sail up, weightless, to the stars.”

“The Delivery”

A catalog of lives in Rome that are deceptively mundane.

“I knew by then that even Dante, in Purgatory, has to look under the boulders. Ma guarda fisso, la, e disviticchia / col viso quel che vien sotto a quesi sassi. I knew that we were the worms.”

(but look straight there and unscrew / with your face what comes under these stones.)

And

“And if I, too, were to survey my life from above? Would I gain some perspective? Or would it only upset me? I loro occhi si sono chiusi su cio che ci seduce, su cio cge ci fa smarrire.”

(Their eyes have closed to what seduces us, to what makes us lose our way).

“Dante Alighieri

This collection is a peak into entire lives captured in vignettes, in several small and expertly woven moments. Lahiri’s characters are brought to life with voices of their own, echoing the experiences of our own lives or lives of those we know. I guess that’s the beauty of being and humanity. And Lahiri just gets it.