Berlin’s writing has the advantage of approaching these themes from a time less exhausting than the present, and she also has a gaze tender and precise enough to make her characters feel like people and not archetypes or sermons in disguise. 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. One of the drug dealers Hernán serves appears again in La Barca de la Ilusión, a gripping and violent account of Berlin’s life in a jewel-like beachside village in Mexico. More often than not, the narration expresses what its isolated female protagonist cannot. An Evening in Paradise is merely something he must endure before he can return to his wife. The character may feel alone, but the story refutes her fear: Someone is seeing her. These stories have the austerity of a steely mental exercise, Berlin scrutinizing herself through the kind or not-so-kind eyes of others, but they also offer reassurance. Others have the sweep and inner architecture of perfect stand-alones. Here is a quick description and cover image of book Evening in Paradise: More Stories written by Lucia Berlin which was published in 1981. Evening in Paradise is even more fragmented than its predecessor : Several of the pieces-including the title story-might most truthfully be described as sketches for stories, or brilliantly drawn scenes from a larger, coherent work that doesn’t exist. Brief Summary of Book: Evening in Paradise: More Stories by Lucia Berlin. It’s no accident that many critics looking for Berlin’s peers compare her primarily to male authors (Hemingway, Raymond Carver), though the comparisons rarely do justice to her humor or her quirky, lavish prose style.
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