Evening in Paradise: More Stories

by Lucia Berlin

Overview

"Berlin probably deserved a Pulitzer Prize." —Dwight Garner, The New York Times

New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice. Named one of the Best Books of 2018 by The Boston Globe, Kirkus, and Lit Hub. Named a Fall Read by Buzzfeed, ELLE, TIME, Nylon, The Boston Globe, Vulture, Newsday, HuffPost, Bustle, The A.V. Club, The Millions, BUST, Reinfery29, Fast Company and MyDomaine.

A collection of previously uncompiled stories from the short-story master and literary sensation Lucia Berlin

In 2015, Farrar, Straus and Giroux published A Manual for Cleaning Women, a posthumous story collection by a relatively unknown writer, to wild, widespread acclaim. It was a New York Times bestseller; the paper’s Book Review named it one of the Ten Best Books of 2015; and NPR, Time, Entertainment Weekly, The Guardian, The Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, and other outlets gave the book rave reviews.

The book’s author, Lucia Berlin, earned comparisons to Raymond Carver, Grace Paley, Alice Munro, and Anton Chekhov. Evening in Paradise is a careful selection from Berlin’s remaining stories—twenty-two gems that showcase the gritty glamour that made readers fall in love with her. From Texas to Chile, Mexico to New York City, Berlin finds beauty in the darkest places and darkness in the seemingly pristine. Evening in Paradise is an essential piece of Berlin’s oeuvre, a jewel-box follow-up for new and old fans.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780374718312
Publisher:	Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication date:	11/06/2018
Sold by:	Macmillan
Format:	eBook
Pages:	256
Sales rank:	571,442
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Lucia Berlin (1936–2004) worked brilliantly but sporadically throughout the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. Her stories are inspired by her early childhood in various Western mining towns; her glamorous teenage years in Santiago, Chile; three failed marriages; a lifelong problem with alcoholism; her years spent in Berkeley, New Mexico, and Mexico City; and the various jobs she held to support her writing and her four sons. Sober and writing steadily by the 1990s, she took a visiting writer's post at the University of Colorado in Boulder in 1994 and was soon promoted to associate professor. In 2001, in failing health, she moved to Southern California to be near her sons. She died in 2004 in Marina del Rey.

Lucia's books include A Manual for Cleaning Women, Welcome Home, and Evening in Paradise.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

THE MUSICAL VANITY BOXES

"Hear the instruction of thy father and mother, for they shall be an ornament of grace unto thy head and chains about thy neck. If sinners entice thee, consent not."

Mamie, my grandmother, read that over twice. I tried to remember what instruction I had had. Don't pick your nose. But I did want a chain, one that rang when I laughed, like Sammy's.

I bought a chain and went to the Greyhound bus depot where a machine printed things on metal discs ... a star in the center. I wrote LUCHA and hung it around my neck.

It was late in June 1943, when Sammy and Jake cut Hope and me in. They were talking with Ben Padilla and at first made us go away. When Ben left, Sammy called us out from under the porch.

"Sit down, we're going to cut you in on something."

Sixty cards. On the top of each card was a tinted picture of a Musical Vanity Box. Next to it was a red seal that said DON'T OPEN. Under the seal was one of the names on the card. Thirty three-letter names with a line beside them. AMY, MAE, JOE, BEA, etc.

"It costs a nickel to buy a chance on a name. You write the person's name next to it. When all the names are sold we open the red seal. The person who chose that name wins the Vanity Box."

"Hell of a lot of Vanity Boxes!" Jake giggled.

"Shut up, Jake. I get these cards from Chicago. Each one makes a buck and a half. I send them a dollar for each and they send me the boxes. Got that?"

"Yeah," Hope said. "So?"

"So you two get a quarter for every card you sell, and we get a quarter. That makes us fifty-fifty partners."

"They can't sell all those cards," Jake said.

"Sure we can," I said. I hated Jake. Teenage punk.

"Sure they can," Sammy said. He handed the cards to Hope. "Lucha's in charge of the money. It's eleven thirty ... get going ... we'll time you."

"Good luck!" they shouted. They were shoving each other over in the grass, laughing.

"They're laughing at us ... they think we can't do it!"

We knocked on our first door ... a lady came and put on her glasses. She bought the first name. ABE. She wrote her name and address next to it, gave us five pennies and her pencil. Precious loves, she called us.

We stopped at every house on that side of Upson. By the time we reached the park we had sold twenty names. We sat down on the wall of the cactus garden, out of breath, triumphant.

The people thought we were darling. We were both very little for our age. Seven. If a woman answered, I sold the chance. My blond hair had grown out twice the size of my head, like a big yellow tumbleweed. "A spun gold halo!" Because my teeth were gone I put my tongue up when I smiled, as if I were shy. The ladies would pat me and bend down to hear ... "What is it, angel? Why, I'd just love to!"

If it was a man, Hope sold. "Five cents ... pick a name," she drawled, handing them the card and the pencil before they could shut the door. They said she had spunk and pinched her dark bony cheeks. Her eyes glared at them through her heavy black veil of hair.

We were concerned now only with time. It was hard to tell when people were home or not. Cranking the doorbell handles, waiting. Worst of all was when we were the only visitors in "ever so long." All of these people were very old. Most of them must have died a few years later.

Besides the lonely people and the ones who thought we were darling, there were some ... two that day ... who really felt it was an omen to open the door and be offered a chance, a choice. They took up the most time, but we didn't mind ... waited, breathless too, while they talked to themselves. Tom? That darn Tom. Sal. My sister called me Sal. Tom. Yes, I'll take Tom. What if it wins??

We didn't even go to the houses on the other side of Upson. We sold the rest in the apartments across from the park.

One o'clock. Hope handed the card to Sammy, I poured the money onto his chest. "Christ!" Jake said.

Sammy kissed us. We were flushed, grinning on the lawn.

"Who won?" Sammy sat up. The knees of his Levi's were green and wet, his elbows green from the grass.

"What does it say?" Hope couldn't read. She had flunked first grade.

ZOE.

"Who?" We looked at each other ... "Which one was that?"

"It's the last one on the card."

"Oh." The man with the ointment on his hands. Psoriasis. We were disappointed, there were two really nice people we had wanted to win.

Sammy said we could keep the cards and money until we had sold them all. We took them over the fence and under the porch. I found an old breadbox to keep them in.

We took three cards and left through the alley, in back. We didn't want Sammy and Jake to think we were too eager. We crossed the street, ran from house to house, knocking on doors, all the way down the other side of Upson. All down one side of Mundy to the Sunshine Grocery.

We had sold two whole cards ... sat on the curb drinking grape soda. Mr. Haddad kept bottles for us in the freezer, so it came out slushy ... like melted popsicles. The buses had to make a narrow turn at the corner, just missing us, honking. Behind us the dust and smoke rose around Cristo Rey Mountain, yellow foam in the Texas afternoon sun.

I read the names aloud — over and over. We put Xs by the ones we hoped would win ... Os by the bad ones.

The barefoot soldier ... "I NEED a Musical Vanity Box!" Mrs. Tapia ... "Well, come in! Good to be seeing you!" A girl sixteen, just married, who had showed us how she painted the kitchen pink, herself. Mr. Raleigh — spooky. He had called off two Great Danes, had called Hope a sexy runt.

"You know ... we could sell a thousand names a day ... if we had roller skates."

"Yeah, we need roller skates."

"You know what's wrong?"

"What?"

"We always say ... 'Do you want to buy a chance?'

We should say 'chances.'"

"How about ... 'Want to buy a whole card?'"

We laughed, happy, sitting on the curb.

"Let's sell the last one."

We went around the corner, the street below Mundy. It was dark, matted with eucalyptus and fig and pomegranate trees, Mexican gardens, ferns and oleander and zinnias. The old women didn't speak English. "No, gracias," shutting the doors.

The priest from Holy Family bought two names. JOE and FAN.

There was a block then of German women, flour on their hands. They slammed the doors. Tsch!

"Let's go home ... this isn't any good."

"No, up by Vilas School there are lots of soldiers."

She was right. The men were outside in khakis and T-shirts, watering yellow Bermuda grass and drinking beer. Hope sold. Her hair stuck now in strings over her olive Syrian face, like a black bead curtain.

One man gave us a quarter and his wife called him before he got his change. "Give me five!" he yelled through the screen door. I started to write his name.

"No," Hope said. "We can sell them again."

* * *

Sammy opened the seals.

Mrs. Tapia had won with SUE, her daughter's name. We had an X by her, she was so nice. Mrs. Overland won the next. Neither of us could remember who she was. The third winner was a man who bought LOU, which really should have gone to the soldier who gave us the quarter.

"We should give it to the soldier," I said.

Hope lifted up her hair to look at me, almost smiling ... "Okay."

I jumped the fence to our yard. Mamie was watering. My mother was playing bridge, my dinner was in the oven. I read Mamie's lips over the H. V. Kaltenborn news from indoors. Grandpa wasn't deaf, he just turned it up loud.

"Can I water for you, Mamie?" No thanks.

I banged the front door rippling stained glass on the wall. "Git in here!" he yelled over the radio. Surprised, I ran in smiling, started to climb into his lap, but he rustled me away with a clipped-out paper.

"You been with those dirty A-rabs?"

"Syrians," I said. His ashtray glowed red like the stained-glass door.

That night ... Fibber McGee and Amos and Andy on the radio. I don't know why he liked them so much. He always said he hated colored people.

Mamie and I sat with the Bible in the dining room. We were still on Proverbs.

"Open rebuke is better than secret love."

"Why?"

"Never mind." I fell asleep and she put me to bed.

I woke when my mother got home ... lay awake beside her while she ate Cheese Tid-Bits and read a mystery. Years later, I figured out that during World War II alone my mother ate over 950 boxes of Cheese Tid-Bits.

I wanted to talk to her, tell her about Mrs. Tapia, the guy with the dogs, how Sammy had cut us in fifty-fifty. I put my head down on her shoulder, Cheese TidBit crumbs, and fell asleep.

* * *

The next day Hope and I went first to the apartments on Yandell Avenue. Young army wives in curlers, chenille bathrobes, mad because we woke them. None of them bought a chance. "No, I don't have a nickel."

We took a bus to the Plaza, transferred to a Mesa bus to Kern Place. Rich people ... landscaping, chimes on the doors. This was even better than the old ladies. Texan Junior League, tanned, Bermuda shorts, lipstick and June Allyson pageboys. I don't think they had ever seen children like us, children dressed in their mothers' old crepe blouses.

Children with hair like ours. While Hope's hair ran down her face like thick black tar, mine stood up and out like a tufted yellow beach ball, crackling in the sun.

They always laughed when they found out what we were selling, went to find some "change." We heard one of them talking to her husband ... "Just come and see them. Actual urchins!" He did come, and he was the only one who bought a chance. The women just gave us money. Their children stared at us, pale, from their swing sets.

"Let's go to the depot."

We used to go there even before the cards ... to hang around and watch everybody kissing and crying, to pick up dropped change beneath the ledge under the newsstand. As soon as we got in the door we poked each other, giggling. Why hadn't this ever occurred to us? Millions of people with nickels and nothing to do but wait. Millions of soldiers and sailors who had a girl or a wife or a child with a three-letter name.

* * *

We made out a schedule. In the mornings we went to the train station. Sailors stretched out on the wooden benches, hats folded over their eyes, like parentheses. "Huh? Oh, morning, sweethearts! Sure."

Old men sitting. Paying a nickel to talk about the other war, about some dead person with a three-letter name.

We went into the COLORED waiting room, sold three names before a white conductor pushed us out by our elbows. We spent afternoons at the USO across the street. The soldiers gave us free lunch, stale ham-and-cheese sandwiches wrapped in wax paper, Cokes, Milky Ways. We played ping-pong and pinball machines while the soldiers filled out the cards. Once we made a quarter each punching the little counter that kept track of how many servicemen came in while the woman that did that went somewhere with a sailor.

New soldiers and sailors kept coming in with each train. The ones who were already there told them to buy our chances. They called me Heaven; and Hope, Hell.

The plan had been to keep all sixty cards until they were sold but we kept getting more and more money and extra tip money and couldn't even count it.

We couldn't wait to see who had won anyway, even though there were only ten cards left. We took the three cigar boxes of money and the cards to Sammy.

"Seventy dollars?" Jesus Christ. They both sat up in the grass. "Crazy damn kids. They did it."

They kissed and hugged us. Jake rolled over and over, holding his stomach, squealing, "Jesus ... Sammy you are a genius, a mastermind!"

Sammy hugged us. "I knew you could do it."

He looked through all the cards, running his hand through his long hair, so black it always looked wet. He laughed at the names that had won.

PFC Octavius Oliver, Fort Sill, Oklahoma. "Hey, where'd you find these cats?" Samuel Henry Throper, Anywhere, USA. He was an old man in the COLORED part who said we could have the Vanity Box if he won.

Jake went to the Sunshine Grocery and brought us drippy banana popsicles. Sammy asked us about all the names, about how we did it. We told him about Kern Place and the pretty housewives in chambray shirtdresses, about the USO, about the pinball machines, the dirty man with the Great Danes.

He gave us seventeen dollars ... more than fiftyfifty. We didn't even take a bus, just ran downtown to Penney's. Far. We bought skates and skate keys, charm bracelets at Kress and a bag of red salted pistachio nuts. We sat by the alligators in the Plaza ... Soldiers, Mexicans, winos.

Hope looked around ... "We could sell here."

"No, nobody's got money here."

"But us!"

"Worst part will be delivering the Musical Vanity Boxes."

"No, because now we have skates."

"Tomorrow let's learn to skate ... hey we can even skate down the viaduct and watch the slag at the smelter."

"If the people aren't home we can just leave them inside the screen door."

"Hotel lobbies would be a good place to sell."

We bought drippy Coney Islands and root beer floats to go. That was the end of the money. We waited to eat until we got to the vacant lot at the beginning of Upson.

The lot was on top of a walled hill, high above the sidewalk, overgrown with fuzzy gray plants that had purple blossoms. Between the plants all over the lot was broken glass dyed to different shades of lavender by the sun. At that time of day, late afternoon, the sun hit the lot at an angle so that the light seemed to come from beneath, from inside the blossoms, the amethyst stones.

* * *

Sammy and Jake were washing a car. A blue jalopy with no roof and no doors. We ran the last block, the skates thumping inside the boxes.

"Whose is it?"

"Ours, want a ride?"

"Where'd you get it?"

They were washing the tires. "From a guy we know," Jake said. "Want a ride?"

"Sammy!"

Hope was standing up on the seat. She looked like she was crazy. I didn't understand yet.

"Sammy — where'd you get the money for this car?"

"Oh, here and there ..." Sammy grinned at her, drank from the hose and wiped his chin with his shirt.

"Where did you get the money?"

Hope looked like an ancient old pale yellow witch. "You cheating motherfucker!" she screamed.

Then I understood. I followed her over the fence and under the porch.

"Lucha!" Sammy, my first hero, called, but I followed her to where she squatted by the breadbox.

She handed me the stack of filled cards. "Count them." It took a long time.

Over five hundred people. We looked over the ones we had put Xs by, hoping that they would win.

"We could buy Musical Vanity Boxes for some of them ..."

She sneered. "With what money? There is no such thing as a Musical Vanity Box anyway. You ever hear of a Musical Vanity Box before?"

She opened the breadbox and took out the ten unsold cards. She was crazy, groveling in the dust under the porch like a dying chicken.

"What are you doing, Hope?"

Panting, she crouched in the honeysuckle opening to the yard. She held up the cards, like the fan of a mad queen.

"They're mine now. You can come. Fifty-fifty. Or you can stay. If you come it means you are my partner and you can't ever talk to Sammy again the rest of your life or I'll murder you with a knife."

She left. I lay down in the damp dirt. I was tired. I just wanted to lie there, forever, and never do anything at all.

I lay there a long time and then I climbed over the wooden fence to the alley. Hope was sitting on the curb at the corner, her hair like a black bucket over her head. Bent, like a Pietà.

"Let's go," I said.

We walked up the hill toward Prospect. It was evening ... all the families were outside watering the grass, murmuring from porch swings that creaked as rhythmically as the cicadas.

Hope banged a gate behind us. We walked up the wet concrete path toward the family. Iced tea, sitting on the steps, the stoop. She held out a card.

"Pick a name. Ten cents a chance."

* * *

We started out early the next morning with the rest of the cards. We said nothing about the new price, about the six we had sold the night before. Most of all we said nothing about our skates ... for two years we'd been hoping for skates. We hadn't even tried them on yet.

When we got off the bus at the Plaza, Hope repeated that she'd kill me if I ever spoke to Sammy again.

"Never. Want blood?" We were always cutting our wrists and sealing promises.

"No."

I was relieved. I knew I would talk to him someday and without blood it wouldn't be so bad.

The Gateway Hotel, like a jungle movie. Spittoons, clicking punkahs, palm trees, even a man in a white suit, fanning himself like Sydney Greenstreet. They all waved us away, rattled their faces back behind their papers as if they knew about us. People like the anonymity of hotels.

Outside, across the heat-sinking tar of the street to catch a trolley for Juarez. Mexicans in rebozos — smelling like American paper bags and Kress candy corn, yellow-orange.

Unfamiliar territory ... Juarez. I knew only the fountained mirrored bars, the "Cielito Lindo" guitar players of my mother's war-widow nights out with the "Parker girls." Hope only knew the dirty-donkey movies. Mrs. Haddad always sent her along on Darlene's dates with soldiers, so everything would be okay.

We stayed at the Juarez end of the bridge, leaning like the taxi drivers, the wooden snake sellers against the shade of the Follies Bar, padding forward as they did when the clusters of tourists, bobbing boy-soldiers came off the bridge.

(Continues…)

---

Excerpted from "Evening in Paradise"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Literary Estate of Lucia Berlin LP.
Excerpted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

---

Table of Contents

CONTENTS

Foreword: The Story Is the Thing, by Mark Berlin vii

The Musical Vanity Boxes 3

Sometimes in Summer 20

Andado: A Gothic Romance 29

Dust to Dust 57

Itinerary 62

Lead Street, Albuquerque 71

Noël. Texas. 1956 83

The Adobe House with a Tin Roof 90

A Foggy Day 112

Cherry Blossom Time 120

Evening in Paradise 126

La Barca de la Ilusión 141

My Life Is an Open Book 158

The Wives 170

Noël, 1974 182

The Pony Bar, Oakland 196

Daughters 197

Rainy Day 203

Our Brother’s Keeper 204

Lost in the Louvre 211

Sombra 220

Luna Nueva 232

A Note on Lucia Berlin 237

Acknowledgments 243

Editorial Reviews

10/01/2018
Following the posthumous collection A Manual for Cleaning Women, which received major attention, here is a selection of Berlin's remaining stories proving that she should have been better known. Opening in the Southwest and Latin America, then spreading throughout the country, these works capture human relationships and interactions with care and grace, making the ordinary extraordinary and the extraordinary achingly familiar. Two young girls, one of Syrian descent, get into trouble selling chances on a Musical Vanity Box (sneaking into Juarez didn't help); in Chile, 14-year-oldAmerican Laura visits an estate and has a sexually charged encounter with an older man that she doesn't fully understand. In New York, a wife constantly corrected by her husband for saying postman rather than mailman sweetly announces, "on the way home I murdered the postman"—and gets corrected again. Her response—"David. Please talk to me"—says everything about the marriage. In a story about Aunt Zelda's inconvenient Christmas visit, a teenager admonished for his drinking shoots back, "I'm old for my age. Thirty-five is young to be a burnout." VERDICT Beautifully realized stories with good, old-fashioned virtues. [See Prepub Alert, 5/14/18.]

Library Journal

…another potent selection of [Berlin's] stories…One thing that makes Berlin so valuable is her gift for evoking the sweetness and earnestness of young women who fall in love…and then catching them at that moment when things begin to turn, when the trees of their being are forced to grow bark. Her women are impulsive; they're leapers; they're in pursuit of wildness, of ravishment; they want to crack their men open like crabs and pull out the meat…Berlin probably deserved a Pulitzer Prize; she definitely deserved, to borrow the name of a Waylon Jennings song, a Wurlitzer Prize, for all the coins she drops into our mental jukeboxes. She has an instinctive access to the ways music can both provoke and fortify. "There are things people just don't talk about," Berlin wrote in a story titled Dust to Dust. "I don't mean the hard things, like love, but the awkward ones, like how funerals are fun sometimes or how it's exciting to watch buildings burning." She managed to write, beautifully, about the hard and the awkward things.

The New York Times - Dwight Garner

★ 09/10/2018
This wonderful posthumous collection from Berlin (A Manual for Cleaning Women) ranges from short, one-page stories about the poor and working class to longer romantic tales about the disaffected daughters of aristocrats in South America. The collection is significant partly because it reveals the centrality of homesickness and geography to Berlin’s work. The elegant title story is set in a hotel in Mexico where the cast and crew of The Night of the Iguana are staying. The American movie stars living in “paradise” at the resort are worn out and distracted compared to the vibrant Mexicans who run the hotel. “Lead Street, Albuquerque” follows two young couples whose lives are interrupted when a friend moves into their building and marries a 17-year-old girl. The friend, who becomes a wildly successful artist, leaves his young wife in the care of the other women, who help her care for her baby. One of the longest stories in the collection is “Andado: A Gothic Romance,” which follows Laura, a 14-year-old schoolgirl in Chile, as she visits the estate of wealthy widower Don Andres. The sexual tension between the older man and the younger girl escalates and eventually confuses the girl’s innocent notions of romance. Berlin’s writing achieves a dreamy, delightful effect as it provides a look back through time. This collection should further bolster Berlin’s reputation as one of the strongest short story writers of the 20th century. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

"Berlin is not only a soulful chronicler of the lost corners of America, whose semi-autobiographical stories brim with red caliche clay, arroyos, drainage ditches and smelter towns. She is not only a writer of vivid bursts of language . . . She is also a distinctly female voice, a raspy Marlene Dietrich." —Nadja Spiegelman, The New York Times Book Review

"Berlin was a writer of tender, chaotic and careworn short stories. Her work can remind you of Raymond Carver's or Grace Paley's or Denis Johnson's . . . One thing that makes Berlin so valuable is her gift for evoking the sweetness and earnestness of young women who fall in love . . . Berlin probably deserved a Pulitzer Prize.." —Dwight Garner, The New York Times

"The stories in Evening in Paradise have that familiar Berlin affect — the clipped prose, the startling details, the signal one-liners or repeated words that burrow into you. Berlin’s prose reads like poetry and feels like memory. Fraught moments are telescoped into spare, suggestive exchanges that directly appeal to the senses."—Maggie Trapp, The Washington Post

"[Berlin] is a master at capturing women in states of disintegration . . . Much of the world that Berlin describes is harrowing for women, and yet her stories . . . cheerfully refuse to erase either the women or the brutality that deranges them. Instead, she rips them up further and pastes them together again, making ruined, radiant chimeras summoned from an unfrequented corner of 20th-century America." —Jordan Kisner, The Atlantic

"Thank god for the posthumous revival of Lucia Berlin — how sad it would be to have never experienced her distinctive, vibrant voice. Her characters are utterly captivating . . . and her scenery envelops you. But it's the early stories, those that follow the meandering adventures of kids just trying to fill their days, that are most alive." —Arianna Rebolini, Buzzfeed (Best Books of Fall 2018)

"Berlin's new book is a marvel, filled with deeply touching stories about lives on the fringes. It's a work of remembrance of the kinds of people who might otherwise be forgotten . . . there's not a single story in Evening in Paradise that's less than beautiful . . . Evening in Paradise proves that Berlin's generous, beautiful spirit will endure in the literary world for decades to come." —Michael Schaub, NPR.org

"Once again [Berlin] makes original art from her chequered life . . . When the words flowed, Berlin managed to perform small miracles with them. Whether describing lucky breaks or hard knocks, her prose is intense and intimate, at once disconcerting and entrancing." —The Economist

"[Evening in Paradise] reveals just how full a body of rich work Berlin left behind . . . Time and again, the stories reveal that her subject wasn’t domestic life but life itself, which for her often happened to be filtered through the domestic." —Ellie Robins, Los Angeles Times

"What molds the fiction is Berlin’s artistic sensibility — her global perspective, the shrewd compassion with which she scrutinizes her characters, and the absurdity — not to mention the flora — that populates the many landscapes of her world." —Emma Heath, San Francisco Chronicle

"This never-before-published memoir and new collection are cause for jubilation. In part because they make it clear Berlin's gifts were vast, complex, and full of tonal warmths . . . Like Chekhov, Berlin was a beautiful framer of stories . . ." —John Freeman, Boston Globe

"Berlin’s gifts are not ones you have ever tried or been told to cultivate. The details she chooses are those you have purposely eliminated, with that hitch in your ear that tells you to keep everything timeless . . . Berlin is telling us that you can use and reuse the raw moments, that the texture of life is to be taken seriously, that those spontaneous bubblings of experience will spark faith, belief, devotion for the same reason that springs of youth and holy fonts do: because they are cold and clear and inexhaustible, because we can drink them out of our hands." —Patricia Lockwood, London Review of Books

"Berlin is forensic in her quality of observation, and her prose rhythm is almost notational in its fluency." —Joanne O'Leary, Bookforum

"Prepare to fall in love all over again . . . the cunning, beautiful creation of a genius of the form." —Kristin Iversen, NYLON

“Long before the current autofiction craze, Lucia Berlin was spinning her day-to-day into powerfully spare prose that ached with brutal authenticity . . . these new volumes become a jigsaw-puzzle portrait of a long-neglected literary legend, baring the autobiographical material that filtered so forcefully into her fiction. The mystery of her fiction is not, it turns out, in the source of its inspiration.” —Lauren Mechling, Vogue

"Reading [Berlin] in today's frenzied doomsday news flash feels like a vacation, a breath of fresh air. Despite the chatter and chaos, there is the promise of change tomorrow, be it good or bad." —Keziah Weir, Vanity Fair

"Every bit as generous and perceptive as A Manual for Cleaning Women . . . Considered together, the two collections leave little doubt she is one of the greatest American short story writers of the 20th century . . . These 22 stories show her startling range and unwavering devotion to remaining open, refusing to judge any of her characters, whether delinquent, conniving, or alcoholic." —Dylan Brown, Los Angeles Review of Books

"There’s still plenty in Evening in Paradise to conjure the original thrill of reading Berlin." —Max Liu, Financial Times

"Some of the 22 stories here are wonderful; others nothing more than a collage of shimmering images. All feature her distinctive voice, which operates in the space between free verse and prose." —Ann Levin, Associated Press

"[Evening in Paradise] affirms Berlin as one of the more underrated writers of her time." —Entertainment Weekly

"Berlin’s stories are remarkable for their dark humour, bright prose and audacious lack of structural integrity – if her collections were houses, their hallways would change direction without warning, and their rooms would be bright and dark at the same time . . . The fiction in which she made her home does not descend into the dirt, or darkness, of urban alienation – it emerges from that dirt. Berlin wrote in pursuit of a sense of belonging, and her fiction is a homecoming." —Nina Ellis, Granta

"In Evening in Paradise—which reads like novel-in-stories—Berlin shows that she was a master of the short story. These pieces remind me of something like Mavis Gallant crossed with Roberto Bolaño—there’s an acute, postwar, working-class milieu, crossed with such insight into the US/Mexico borderlands and Latin America (Berlin knew these areas so well). This book is so transportative, so wonderful." —Veronica Esposito, Lit Hub

"Anyone worried that Evening in Paradise might somehow be inferior to Manual is in for a pleasant surprise . . .this new collection of stories showcases the same remarkable skill and pathos that Berlin fans have long cherished . . . Berlin has a particular, albeit well-nuanced, sympathy for intelligent, outspoken women who, like herself, are struggling to get by." —Ryan Smernoff, Los Angeles Review of Books

"Berlin’s stories, largely autobiographical tales of working class life in the American West, slipped beneath the radar in her lifetime but galvanized contemporary readers. Now we have a second, smaller volume that is every bit as good as its predecessor. If you’ve never read Berlin, now’s your chance." —Tom Beer, Newsday

"The nimbleness with which Berlin moves between proximate feelings . . . is what makes the work so ruthless, sympathetic, and comic all at once . . . The autobiographical content of Berlin’s stories doesn’t undermine their artfulness, any more than their humor undermines the ugliness of the situations depicted. Rather, both sets of factors exist in searing, inimitable tension." —Annie Adams, The Sewanee Review

"The short story queen . . . The stories are whip-smart and strangely funny, and you'll be thinking about them for days afterward." —Melissa Ragsdale, Bustle

"Read one of [Berlin's] powerful, authentic stories that peer right into the human condition, and you'll understand the hype." —Elena Nicolaou, Refinery29

"Blessedly, a second volume with 22 more stories is in no way second rate but rather features more seductive, sparkling autofiction . . . No dead author is more alive on the page than Berlin: funny, dark, and so in love with the world." —Kirkus (starred review)

"Wonderful . . . The collection is significant partly because it reveals the centrality of homesickness and geography to Berlin’s work . . . Berlin’s writing achieves a dreamy, delightful effect as it provides a look back through time. This collection should further bolster Berlin’s reputation as one of the strongest short story writers of the 20th century." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Prov[es] that [Berlin] should have been better known . . . these works capture human relationships and interactions with care and grace, making the ordinary extraordinary and the extraordinary achingly familiar . . . Beautifully realized stories with good, old-fashioned virtues." —Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal (Top Short Fiction for Fall)

From the Publisher

Narrator Kyla Garcia is a bright voice for this selection of short stories, which feature diverse characters who range from confused children to disappointed adults. She sets a quick pace through the 20-plus stories that have been gathered here posthumously. Garcia is a capable performer who helps listeners distinguish between men, women, children, and adults. Her style is easy on the ears as listeners are carried in and out of varied lives. She is most effective when she's inhabiting young children, and she goes to extra lengths to bring listeners believable Southern accents and accurate pronunciations of Spanish words. From dysfunctional families to unrequited love, listeners travel emotional distances through these stories. M.R. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine

NOVEMBER 2018 - AudioFile

★ 2018-07-02
Twenty-two more stories from an author who died in 2004 and made it big in 2015.Berlin (A Manual for Cleaning Women, 2015, etc.) published 76 stories in her lifetime in a number of small-press books. Three years ago, a collection that reprinted 43 of them took the literary world by storm, with placement on top-ten lists and comparisons to Carver, Paley, Munro, and Chekhov abounding. (The book was also a finalist for the Kirkus Prize for Fiction.) Blessedly, a second volume with 22 more stories is in no way second rate but rather features more seductive, sparkling autofiction with narrators whose names echo the author's in settings and situations that come from her roller-coaster biography (which is summarized in an appendix). The stories are arranged in roughly chronological order, beginning with two set in El Paso, Texas, about a little troublemaker named Lucha, followed by three in Chile. In "Andado: A Gothic Romance," Laura's family is invited to spend four days at the country estate of a man named Don Andrés. Her parents can't make it, so they send her by herself. "Ted said his child would be coming, not a lovely woman," comments the former ambassador to France, one of the wealthiest men in Chile. "I'm fourteen," Laura replies. "I'm just all dressed up for this party." This information will not have much effect on Don Andrés' conduct. The title story takes its inspiration from the period when the author was married to Buddy Berlin, a jazz player and sometime heroin addict, and the two lived with their kids outside Puerto Vallarta. It features cameos by Richard Burton, Liz Taylor, Ava Gardner, and John Huston, whose appearance in that area during the filming of Night of the Iguana is legendary. Its lightheartedness is immediately balanced by "La Barca de la Ilusión," which finds its protagonist in a palapa with a floor of sand on the Mexican coast, home-schooling her boys, hoping that living in the middle of nowhere will keep her husband off drugs. (What she does to his dealer is probably fictional, but we'll never know.) For black humor and alcoholism, go straight to "The Wives," in which two exes of the same man get together to chug rum and reminisce, spilling drinks and burning holes in their clothes.No dead author is more alive on the page than Berlin: funny, dark, and so in love with the world.

Kirkus Reviews