Names:

Jhumpa Lahiri avoids names, of people, places, as if naming were owning or presuming more than she means to, more than she can.

I read Whereabouts and then Roman Stories, mostly at night, for company. Without names you set yourself a formal problem, how to fix people without naming them, how to write them into the reader's awareness, the writer's willingness. To say only just enough, and then move on. 

The art of fixing people in a story in order to think about them, and yourself, and to shape a story, is soporific and convivial in the middle of the night. 

Next day I think about the reticence, the strain of it: this is as close she can come to the people she writes about, lives among, perpetual foreigner, self-regarding as you're forced to be, as most of us are forced to be, while being off-hand, obedient, unexceptionable. 

I should note straightaway that P's parties took place every year at her house, on a Saturday or a Sunday afternoon, during the mild winters we typically enjoy in this city.

We can take any amount of drama after that.