Robin Romm's new collection of stories is...well, it's delicious. Admittedly, that's an odd description for a book, but it fits because Romm's short fiction involves appetites. The raw needs of the body figure even in the stories that lack a sexual theme. That's because Romm is interested in bodies: how they look, what they do, and how those bodies propel the imaginative lives of her characters. I'm attracted to this approach because it focuses on the physical, and how the physical informs our relationships. Despite this thematic alignment, the stories range in subject matter and point of view, a happy diversity that kept me engaged.
If I had to choose a favorite, the first story, "Marital Problems," would be a contender because the first person narrator, a woman with a young child and a husband named Victor, has a way of thinking about people that is so intimate and confessional she feels like a best friend. It's a story that uses the mundane details of a kitchen remodel job to reach its true subject, her own marriage. How does she do this? It happens through a series of sentences that express her complex reality—her family, the remodel job, the woman next door—with a subtle and surprising brand of voice-driven humor that is a pleasure to experience.
On page 4 when the narrator describes their frustration with Marco, a contractor who has been stringing them along for months, never finishing, she notes that her husband's frustration often swirls into rage because it rouses the anger he felt as a child towards his absent father, a man who spent more time bird-watching than he spent with his son. "The person Victor would really like to beat up, of course, is the deadbeat birder, but any man who comes around and tries to pull a fast one gets a tiny does of Victor's ancient, private rage" (6).
Two pages later, when describing a realtor who, according to Victor, had tried, unsuccessfully, to entice him into the bedroom on a house tour, she remarks:
"Or maybe they slept together in that ranch house. Maybe usually moral and righteous Victor couldn't resist such low-hanging fruit and let this forward, frothy agent suck him off in the slatted light of cheap blinds" (8).
Forward, frothy, slatted light...the musicality of the narrator's words signal a kind of detachment, and I suspect it is that detachment that allows for such humor.
The narrator is friends with their next door neighbor, Danielle, who makes a living doing "voice work" and is recognized as a "gasping expert, famous for expressing surprise" (9). "Now, apparently, she can freelance from Portland, flying out to Los Angeles to gasp every once in a while—an oral stunt man" (9). Not only that, she is having an affair with Marco, their contractor.
The three sentences I've quoted all combine precise meaning with a pleasing rhythm and a word order that places the "kick" on the last phrase: "Victor's ancient, private rage," "the slatted light of cheap blinds," and the last one, "an oral stunt man." All have rhythmic cadence, but each is remarkable for different reasons. The first one feels absolutely true—we do overact when something triggers an unhealed wound from childhood. The second I enjoy because of the irony of a wife imagining the room where her husband may have had a tryst, and the third, for its humor.
A few pages later, Danielle is described this way:
"She's not terribly thin—a refreshing trait in this city of bone-broth sipping anorexics. Her curves just make her look sensual. She once told me she breastfed Madeline for thirty-one months. Men, babies, whole towns could probably live off that body for a while, so glossy with nutrients" (10).
There's that stunning last phrase again, but altogether, this paragraph packs in a lot—the maternal and sexual, but the last phrase delivers something more subtle, the idea of endless nourishment available through the healthy surface of beautiful skin. Gloss is even more evocative of Danielle's goddess stature.
But the sentence that felt like dessert after a rich and wondrous meal is this one that appears when the narrator opens a cabinet door in their unfinished kitchen and the hinge breaks.
Marco, the contractor, witnesses this proof of his shoddy work, but before he can be accused of anything he turns defensive:
"'Those were the hinges in the bid,' says Marco, his lips so soft above that blond goatee he's nurturing, that little patch of fur he probably dragged into Danielle's private swamps last night, his chin as obdurate as any child's" (16).
There's the rhythmic swing of the final last phrase, the musicality heightening its functions. As it echoes with Victor's ancient, private rage, it also creeps into the interesting territory of one woman imagining the sexual activities of another. The childishly obdurate chin suggests that Marco too has childhood rage fueling his adult behavior. I don't even need to mention the animalistic "fur," or Danielle's wet and fecund "swamps," as our narrator imagines their oral foreplay.
Robin Romm is the true verbal stunt man. The story glides between the mundane (cabinet hinges) and the profound (marriage and children) as it winds its way towards an entirely satisfying irresolution of one of life's most common but intriguing subjects: families. That is the overall subject of Radical Empathy, as the stories target the hot spots—pregnancy, dating, elderly parents, motherhood and jobs. With masterly ease and skill, Romm writes about the hidden dilemmas of family life in contemporary America, the unseen, unspoken, and overlooked.
Romm, Robin. Radical Empathy. New York: Four Way Books, 2024.
Filed under: Creating voice driven sentences