A review by johndiconsiglio
Evening in Paradise by Lucia Berlin

3.0

The rediscovery of the late short story-master Lucia Berlin continues with 22 deeply felt tales of people on the edge. While her brilliant collection A Manual for Cleaning Women portrayed life’s losers stumbling through bars and ERs, this is a chronological tour of the places that formed Berlin’s world—her childhood in El Paso; a whirlwind adolescence among Chilean mining barons; marriages to heroin-hooked jazz musicians in New York & New Mexico; hard drinking in the California desert. It’s a mixed joy to see her find a posthumous audience, even if these stories don’t all pack Cleaning Women’s spare thrills.