![]() On the sentence level, Berlin works in clear prose often relying on broad sketches of people and places. While there’s a nostalgic quality to the writing, Berlin doesn’t attempt to justify or valorize the imperfections of her characters. Berlin is not one to glamorize the tough times of bad men, alcoholism, poor housing, and cheap labor. ![]() In the foreword, Berlin’s first son Mark writes, “Ma wrote true stories not necessarily autobiographical, but close enough for horseshoes.” These twenty-two stories do indeed read close to home, which is to say they feel like honest domestic realism, even if they tackle larger ideas about misogyny and troubled artists. Evening in Paradise, a selected collection of work throughout Berlin’s career, follows women entrapped or abandoned by monstrous men and confronts the realities of the families left behind. However, Berlin’s short fiction, in stark contrast, reveals how much of this canonical self-prescribed heroism is utter bullshit. To some degree, the themes are consistent. ![]() ![]() In subject and style, Lucia Berlin’s short stories could be compared to the work of Hemingway, or that of the Beats, or any number of male writers who have attempted to mythologize their domestic inadequacies, proclivity for violence, and flagrant substance abuse. ![]()
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