Books of the Week. In 2015 Lucia Berlin burst, posthumously, out of obscurity with the publication of a selection of her stories entitled A Manual for Cleaning Women. Here was an authentic voice, a cleanness of style, a depiction of disadvantage, vulnerability and strength without sentimentality of condescension, a mordant but sympathetic humour, and an ability to pivot the largest observations on the smallest of details. The new selection of stories, Evening in Paradise, and the never-before-published set of autobiographical sketches, Welcome Home, that Berlin was working on when she died in 2004, will reinforce Berlin's place in the front line of 20th century American writing. 
>>Visit the Lucia Berlin website. 
>>Lydia Davis likes Lucia Berlin. 
>>"I was always on the outside."
>> Lucia Berlin writes home. 
>>An 'Unmanageable' alcoholic.
>> A litany of failed homes. 
>>Home movies. 
>>A Lucia Berlin mug, anyone?