Lucia Berlin

Softcover, 224 pages ISBN: 1-57423-091-3 1999 $16.95 Where I Live Now: Stories 1993-1998 by Lucia Berlin "Berlin’s literary model is Chekhov, but there are extra-literary models too, including the extended jazz solo, with its surges, convolutions, and asides. This is writing of a very high order." —August Kleinzahler, London Review of Books   Set mainly in Los Angeles, Lucia Berlin’s gritty working-class stories bridge the gap between the Americas—rich and poor, North and South, Anglo and Hispanic. While her style has been compared to Raymond Carver’s, and her dream- and drink-addicted characters to Richard Yates', her fictional territory and fatalistic humor are hers alone. “This remarkable collection occasionally put me in mind of Annie Proulx’s Accordion Crimes, with its sweep of American origins and places. Berlin is our Scheherazade, continually surprising her readers with a startling variety of voices, vividly drawn characters, and settings alive with sight and sound.” —Barbara Barnard, American Book Review   Softcover, 220 pages ISBN: 0-87685-893-0 1993 $14.95   So Long: Stories 1987-1992 by Lucia Berlin “Affecting . . . Compelling . . . Remarkably successful. Berlin places her memorable characters in gripping situations, plumbing their messed-up lives for pathos and allowing us to see deeply into their souls.” —Publishers Weekly “Most of the twenty-three stories in this collection are very short and very simple. They are set in the places Berlin knows best: Chile, Mexico, the Desert Southwest, and California, and they have the casual, straightforward, immediate, and intimate style that distinguishes her work. They are told in a conversational voice and they move with a swift and often lyrical economy. They capture and communicate moments of grace and cast a lovely, lazy light that lasts. Berlin is one of our finest writers and here she is at the height of her powers.” —Molly Giles, San Francisco Chronicle Softcover, 284 pages ISBN: 0-87685-815-9 1977 $15.95   Homesick: New & Selected Stories by Lucia Berlin Winner of the 1991 Before Columbus/ American Book Award “Pain is the subject of these stories, bit it is not the maudlin, romantic pain found in fiction issuing from ‘Creative Writing Therapy’ sessions . . . it has humor, the uneasy, unpredictable humor of a Richard Pryor monologue. With Homesick Berlin can be judged alonside Raymond Carver, Alice Adams, and Bobbie Anne Mason. She is a remarkable writer, especially on life in the new American West.” —Keith Abbott For this, her first major collection, Lucia Berlin gathered the best of her work from 1960 to 1990, including stories from The Atlantic and Saul Bellow’s little magazine The Noble Savage and the immortal “My Jockey,” winner of the Jack London Short Prize, 1985. “There is nothing tentative about the range of statement in these stories. They are about what can be lost and what can be endured. Berlin’s characters are often neglected or abused girls, or women with children who struggle to make ends meet while their husbands, absent or present, provide no help. The strength and endurance of these characters, combined with their daily observations about the pain and drama of life, give them the ability to affirm their existence.” —Pat Smith