From We’re Flying, Stories by Peter Stamm, Translated by Michael Hofmann.
Other Press, August, 2012
When I read “Expectations”, the first story in the collection, We’re Flying, I was surprised to discover that I was reading a tightly told tale of erotic bliss. I’ve heard so much about this collection, its no wonder PW gave it a starred review. It’s not that this was soft porn, or some odd tale of a person telling a friend about his or her sexual hopes, dreams and desires. It was Peter Stamm telling me of someone who is desperate with loneliness and broken by longing.
Our narrator has a job she likes; taking care of kindergarten-aged children. But this job description did make me wonder exactly where her development had originally been arrested. So the story goes, and she begins to hear things in the upstairs apartment and is convinced that her elderly neighbor has died, or was murdered.
Sex hasn’t happened yet. But it will, I promise you. Stamm delivers a slow pitch, and the devil really is in the details. This is exactly the kind of story I love, where moments are plain, simple and emotions are turned over like a winning hand of black jack. Love, love, love how our narrator describes the boy who lives upstairs, how she strokes him, and he touches her breast. In her mind and in the flesh, everything is imagined with equal desire. Even how she describes sperm stains being hard to wash out of her sofa. You’ll have to find why for yourself. The boy’s Iron Maiden t-shirt is beyond perfect, like, ouch, it’s so good. I blushed, got up from my seat, set the book down and walked away when I read the last paragraph of this story. Our narrator gets what she wants, and it’s good, very, very good.
This is a wonderfully tight story that makes you feel like you’re in the room, and watching this love affair of desire come together. Stamm illuminates human desire and the pain it causes. How loneliness can crush you, even if you have a full and busy life.
Reading this collection reminds me of visiting the Pantheon on a rainy day, it makes you feel like the rain falling through the hole in the ceiling is just for you.
