Lady V. & Other Stories

Fiction. Translated from the Romanian by Simina Calin, Calin-Andrei Mihailescu, Ramona Uricescu, and Liana Lupas. Popa's Lady V. is still a virgin after four marriages, yet one can't say if this entitles her to travel from the actual world of the Frick Museum into Whistler's paintings exhibited therein. With a touch of Hawthorne and a bow to Henry James, "Lady V." invites the reader to step into the story and see from the inside its contours. From this refined decadence the world goes on psyche's sly fantastic slopes in a "Choice" reminiscent of Salem 1692, to then return, with the delirious humor of "Panic Syndrome!," to Manhattan, the psychoanalysts' neighborhood. At the end of all these turns the reader gets it: nobody invented anxiety, but in the Great Belly of the City, full of butterflies, the legion of pros is there to shrink it.