Evening In Paradise

American short story writer Lucia Berlin died in 2004, and it is only since then that her work has become widely read. But

Evening In Paradise is certainly not a bunch of stories left over from her 2015 bestselling collection, A Manual For

Cleaning Women.

This batch once again reaches to the core of things. Berlin tackles love, loneliness and addiction, while the heat and colour of Chile and New Mexico leap from the page. She has a keen eye for the ugliness of human nature and for how we both twist and turn ourselves into what others want us to be, and then also dismantle their expectations. Children run wild in her stories, playing at being grown-ups, while the adults she describes are often listless, lost and on the edge of anger. Her spare, evocative language and lithe turn of phrase make each phrase quietly extraordinary. ■