Review of In Farthest Seas by Lalla Romano

*In Farthest Seas* by Lalla Romano, translated by Brian Robert Moore (2025). Published by Pushkin Press Classics.

If you’re new here, and stumbled upon this blog through the mythical powers of the Internet, welcome! I know a lot of visitors to my website are people who randomly come upon this website through search engines like Google, but I also do have a lot of visitors who come back. Regardless: my name is Ashley, and I started this blog in order to keep track of everything I’m coming across in the world.

Running a book blog and reading almost two hundred books a year (I’ve done this almost every year of my life—it’s been a fascinating trend, even when I’ve been too busy to exist outside of life and work), I tend to know what kind of books I like. I’m also very intentional in analyzing the trends of what I’m reading, as I’m genuinely committed to diversifying the books I pick up and see new perspectives.

I often go to the library to hunt among the shelves for books that interest me, whether I have heard of them not or before, but lately I’m coming out of an unemployment spell. For the longest time it feels like I’ve been starting all of my blog posts detailing my journey as an unemployed Gen Z-er trying to find a job in this horrendous market, but I did end up finding a job eventually after 300 applications.

It took a while, but I got there. During that period where I was job hunting I ended up finding out in my free time that I would go insane if I constantly thought about my future, so I read a lot and watched a handful of movies here and there. This blog has been a flurry of activity because of that.

I also spent a solid chunk of my last few weeks of unemployment just catching up on what needs to be done when it comes to my advance copies. I take deadlines very seriously, especially when it comes to books gifted to me, even if my reviews are independent of the fact the publisher gave this to me for free.

In Farthest Seas is one of the books I read right before I started my new job. It’s a bit of a short read, clocking in at only 150 pages, so if you wanted to read this on a weekend or during your commute on public transport this would be good for that.

Let’s get into the review! I’m trying to be conscious of how long my introductions are, as I feel they can get a bit rambling at times. Much love to NetGalley and the publisher for the advance copy to read!

The beginning and end of the author’s love story with her husband.

Before we get into the core of what this book is about, I feel like we need to address the hybridity of its genre. I forgot about the synopsis when I finally cracked into my copy of the book, and I thought that it was a novel more because of its structure. But, as the synopsis suggests, this is somewhere between a novel, memoir, and elegy.

What Romano is writing about in this book is her actual story with her husband Innocenzo. I had not heard of the author before reading this book specifically, so I could not tell you where the autofiction begins and ends, so take it with a grain of salt when I say “XYZ” happened because the blurring of genres was confusing to me. I do know that this was based on her and her husband’s story, even though the “novel” aspect of the synopsis implies a layer of fiction.

Anyways, as I mentioned previously, this is the story of how Lalla and Innocenzo met. She tells this story through a series of vignettes, but does nothing to really break them up. I thought they were appropriately bridged between each other, but I could see how someone with a wandering mind or eye might find themselves drowning in the sea that she’s created.

This is a series of memories between the two. It’s pretty sweet and intimate when we go through the first four years of their romance together. There’s always that little spark that pushes two people together in the beginning of their relationship, and for these two they found themselves going on hikes throughout the Alps.

As they continued to chat about their intellectual interests and what makes them unique in the world, they found themselves really becoming more kindred souls. We see them through major life events, including their wedding, and the beginnings of a new life together.

But then the book shifts to the end. While the first section of Romano’s writing is full of sweet and tender moments, the final section is grief fully unleashed. We had four months of their relationship in the beginning before; now we have the final four months. Innocenzo is dying, and Lalla is going to be left behind in a world without him.

There’s a lot to unpack from this alone, but as we see in their final days together there are still those sweet and tender moments. As we see their time coming to a close together on this earth, it comes together in a way that feels so beautiful, especially considering how much of their beginning and love we saw in the previous section of the book.

Overall Thoughts

I could see how the average reader might trip up with the style of Romano’s writing, especially when she launches into a random (it’s not actually random—it feels quite fitting, but someone with a more critical eye would call these random) poem or tangent, but I thought that this was well done. Sometimes when we look back on our lives it’s a series of good memories, so I felt this was an accurate way to depict their relationship.

At the same time, splitting it so that it was four months versus four years was also a good decision, as we know what’s coming by the time we hit our groove in the second section of the book. We don’t need to draw out the agony of a death even on the page, when the person and writer are long dead, but we can draw out the beauty of their relationship and immortalize it.

I did really enjoy reading this book, although I’m not too sure if I’m going to be returning to it in the near future. Sometimes a good book is just picking it up, reading it, appreciating what it has to say, and not needing to come back to it until maybe much later in life.

Go read this one if you’re interested! Everything I’ve picked up from Pushkin Press has been incredibly fascinating for me—they’re a press to keep an eye on if you have similar taste.

Follow me below on Instagram, Goodreads, and Letterboxd for more.