I found reading Roman Stories a discomfiting experience and I think that is exactly what Jhumpa Lahiri wanted. The people in these stories find themselves in episodes of crisis, isolation, or disorientation. An expatriate woman waiting for surgery, an immigrant child minder forced to live in a different continent from her young son, another immigrant forced out of his home by his neighbors’ racist hatred, a lonely widow trying to make sense of a city transformed since her childhood. Everyone is sad, uncomfortable, angry, or alone. Rome, the author’s adopted home in recent times, is the setting for all the stories, and it’s not the Rome the tourists see. It’s a city in decline, a place scarred by graffiti and garbage, where the immigrants are mistreated and those born and raised there are uneasy and alienated.

There are powerful and poignant stories here (I liked The Procession especially), but I finished the collection feeling that many failed to make the impact the author intended. For me short stories require a sharpness of focus and a precision of expression. Something is lost in this most exacting of genres if the lens roams too freely. I wanted less, but the author always seemed to want to give more.