A Temporary Matter

by Jhumpa Lahiri

Navigating between the Indian traditions they've inherited and the baffling new world, the characters in Jhumpa Lahiri's elegant, touching stories seek love beyond the barriers of culture and generations. In "A Temporary Matter," published in The New Yorker, a young Indian-American couple faces the heartbreak of a stillborn birth while their Boston neighborhood copes with a nightly blackout.

Genres: Short Stories, School, Fiction, Read For School, Literary Fiction, Literature, Contemporary

15 pages, ebook

Published January 1, 1999

About the author

Nilanjana Sudeshna "Jhumpa" Lahiri is a British-American author known for her short stories, novels, and essays in English and, more recently, in Italian.

Her debut collection of short-stories, Interpreter of Maladies (1999), won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the PEN/Hemingway Award, and her first novel, The Namesake (2003), was adapted into the popular film of the same name. The Namesake was a New York Times Notable Book, a Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist and was made into a major motion picture.

Unaccustomed Earth (2008) won the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, while her second novel, The Lowland (2013) was a finalist for both the Man Booker Prize and the National Book Award for Fiction.

On January 22, 2015, Lahiri won the US$50,000 DSC Prize for Literature for The Lowland. In these works, Lahiri explored the Indian-immigrant experience in America.

In 2012, Lahiri moved to Rome, Italy and has since then published two books of essays, and began writing in Italian, first with the 2018 novel Dove mi trovo, then with her 2023 collection Roman Stories. She also compiled, edited, and translated the Penguin Book of Italian Short Stories which consists of 40 Italian short stories written by 40 different Italian writers. She has also translated some of her own writings and those of other authors from Italian into English.

In 2014, Lahiri was awarded the National Humanities Medal. She was a professor of creative writing at Princeton University from 2015 to 2022. In 2022, she became the Millicent C. McIntosh Professor of English and Director of Creative Writing at her alma mater, Barnard College of Columbia University.

Reviews

[eggs · Rating 3 out of 5]

A temporary matter 4/5
When Mr.Pirzada Came to Dine 3/5
Interpreter of Maladies 1/5
A Real Durwan 1/5
Sexy 1/5
Mrs Sen’s 4(?)/5
This Blessed House /5
The Treatment of Bibi Haldar 4/5
The Third and Final Continent 4/5

[Andrea Gutierrez · Rating 4 out of 5]

so short but i liked it but the ending ?? like ok why did u crush that man’s heart

[Haley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully written. I don’t know how to explain it, but I loved the references to various food dishes. They seemed somehow meaningful. I feel like the reason for each of them was not trivial, but I couldn’t put my finger on exactly why. I could tell from the offset this story would make me cry, and I wasn’t wrong.

[Naddy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Only Jhumpa knows how to write melancholy !!

[aster · Rating 5 out of 5]

OH MY GOD 😭😭😭😭 thank god some of the stuff on the dse syllabus is actually good jesus christ i loved this so much the characterisation is so good and by the end of it it felt like my stomach was a bottomless pit thanks a lot miss lahiri

[Sonia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Me encanta como narra Lahiri.
Relato de pérdidas, reconexión y decisiones vitales.

[Remy Donald · Rating 5 out of 5]

Genuinely forgot this is the not the first time I’ve read this piece until it all came rushing back to me the moment I picked up this story. I think this is beautifully done - the framework of the power outage and each night being used as a confessional is such a great choice in organizations/structure. Even though there’s only two active characters in this story, it feels like there’s four - the two current characters, and the ghosts of who they used to be with each other. The ending is absolutely devastating, yet relieving, just like I imagine it is for the characters themselves.


(Read for Fiction Writer’s Workshop)

[talise · Rating 5 out of 5]

so authentic and written with such verisimilitude. this short story feels like watching a film because of how three dimensional the characters are. despite dealing with a heavy subject matter, lahiri doesn’t venture into the dramatics or the cliches, dealing with trauma in a way that really evokes empathy within the reader. the narration truly reads like a stream of consciousness where sometimes the character’s thoughts feel fractured, flashing before the reader’s eyes like a punch to the gut amidst smooth flowing prose.

so glad to have picked this up at some random secondhand store :)

[Éva Tóth · Rating 5 out of 5]

so moving that i had to add it in here

[Jo Hark · Rating 4 out of 5]

didn’t realize this was a short story when I started it; ending gave me chills 🕯️

[Daniela Diaz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully written, intimate, and quietly devastating. Proof that a short story can still completely break your heart.

[Holly · Rating 5 out of 5]

beautiful and horrible

[Jake · Rating 5 out of 5]

one of the most emotional short stories ive ever read

[Barbara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved it, could write an essay about it

[Lily Walter · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favorite short stories ever :)

[Jd · Rating 4 out of 5]

The casual neglect, the backhanded insults. What a line. “A Christmas gift from a friend, even though Shoba and Shukumar hadn’t celebrated Christmas last year.” As if not celebrating eliminated it from the calendar, or nullified the gift. The separation of this pair in the familiar and mundane. The isolation. Ah, there it is. Tragedy. The things we remember surrounding tragedy are so often small but so fixed in our memories. Ugh, “...in a wing of the hospital they hadn’t been to on the tour for expectant parents.” Oh, the casual cruelties we inflict on the grieving… ”these things happen.” They are both grieving and both feeling guilt. Maybe they’ve talked it out and there are no more tears to cry but you get the sense they haven’t shared their grief, they’ve coped individually. I think there is a slight hint at an unreliable narrator at play here. The husband feels like the wife he knew has changed. The woman he loved has changed. Like it’s an intentional insult. He can’t understand why she would want to escape the place where she nested and imagined raising her child when he feels scared to leave as if that will prevent tragedy. As if preventing change will keep things as they should be. My husband doesn’t understand why I hate our house so much but we bought this house imagining we would fill it with children and every moment here is a reminder to me. I had to look up what a carrel was. UGH! THE CASUAL CRUELTIES WE INFLICT ON THE GRIEVING! I know, I know. MIL’s grieving too. People say stupid things. The symbology of the darkness being a place for secrets too hard to speak in the light is clear. The forced gift of intimacy from the utility company meeting their desperate need to find each other again in the darkness, through the darkness, and back into the light. We, as a society, are so uncomfortable with grief. We want to hurt others when we are hurting and at the very moment when our empathy should be closest to the surface. We are left at the moment of their breaking, the grief finally being expressed. It’s as if the author doesn’t want us to resolve the story by having an answer to how they proceed from here because that is not the point. The release was the point, the breaking, the sharing of sorrow. Goodness sakes I’m wrung out.

[Federico DN · Rating 2 out of 5]

Meh.

It was ok, but not worth reviewing.

For the moment at least.

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PERSONAL NOTE :
[1999] [15p] [Fiction] [1.5] [Not Recommendable]
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★★★★★ The Third and Final Continent.
★★☆☆☆ Interpreter of Maladies. <--
★★★☆☆ Unaccustomed Earth.

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Meh.

Estuvo bien, pero no vale la pena reseñarlo.

Al menos por ahora.

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NOTA PERSONAL :
[1999] [15p] [Ficción] [1.5] [No Recomendable]
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[Pol · Rating 5 out of 5]

First book club of 2026. Beautifully and simply written. He didn’t try hard enough, he relied on her to put in the extra effort that made life special and when she could no longer do that because of her grief he grew disinterested and resentful. She put in all the effort and he only felt reconnected with her when it was too late. Even in that final act of reconnection he is passive at the start, she is the one who instigates things. Maybe one of my favourite book club books. It felt poignant, I felt connected to this breakdown of their relationship, it has made me reflective and it feels healing, lots of tears.

[Amanda Salatino · Rating 3 out of 5]

"The birthday candles had run out, but he pictured her face clearly in the dark, the wide tilting eyes, the full grape-toned lips, the fall at age two from her high chair still visible as a comma on her chin. Each day, Shukumar noticed, her beauty, which had once overwhelmed him, seemed to fade. The cosmetics that had seemed superfluous were necessary now—not to improve her but to define her somehow."

[Keerthana · Rating 5 out of 5]

I just re-read this after coming across it in a creative writing class a few years ago. This is the fastest any story has ever made me tear up lol. So wonderfully written and the tension between the couple is so palpable and visceral. The ending was a sucker punch to the gut. Just wow. Lahiri has a gift for seamlessly dropping a ton of information and depth to her characters in just a few words.

[Madeleine · Rating 5 out of 5]

This story was phenomenal. It managed to capture, in such a short length, the raw emotions of a truly devastating situation in the seemingly mundane procession of regular life. It was an utterly amazing piece

[Carla · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read this for my writing class, and while I didn’t particularly enjoy it, I did feel like these two characters came alive through the page. The author fully submerges you into the setting and makes you feel like a fly on the wall. Not my favorite, but a well-written story. No doubt.

[JA · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is sad :( I encountered this story because my lit prof said that many of his students cry whenever they are tackling it. Lahiri writes really well. It is an easy read, a supposed calm read, but when you get to the end, it’ll really devastate you.

[Mimi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jhumpa Lahiri stop making my cry in cafe's challenge... so profound. The mourning of life and the loss of. What could have been. What now has to be grieved alone. Literally trying not to sob in front of all these people

[nina · Rating 5 out of 5]

amazing and devastating and nothing could have prepared me for the ending (or how well it was written)

[Fira · Rating 5 out of 5]

beautiful and sad

[P.M. · Rating 5 out of 5]

beautifulllll

[Alicia Jessip · Rating 5 out of 5]

The amount of depth in the emotions achieved in a short story was so impressive.

[Kubicz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yeah so this destroyed me! Shout-out to my professor who apparently wants me to sink further into seasonal depression

[Precious · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Temporary matter - It was riveting.