Evening in Paradise, Lucia Berlin
Evening in Paradise, Lucia Berlin
List: $19.95 | Sale: $13.97
Club: $9.97

Evening in Paradise
More Stories

Author: Lucia Berlin

Narrator: Kyla Garcia

Unabridged: 9 hr 2 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 11/06/2018

Synopsis

A collection of previously uncompiled stories from the short-story master and literary sensation Lucia BerlinIn 2015, Farrar, Straus and Giroux published A Manual for Cleaning Women, a posthumous story collection by a relatively unknown writer, to wild, widespread acclaim. It was a New York Times bestseller; the paper’s Book Review named it one of the Ten Best Books of 2015; and NPR, Time, Entertainment Weekly, the Guardian, the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, and other outlets gave the book rave reviews.The book’s author, Lucia Berlin, earned comparisons to Raymond Carver, Grace Paley, Alice Munro, and Anton Chekhov. Evening in Paradise is a careful selection from Berlin’s remaining stories―twenty-two gems that showcase the gritty glamour that made readers fall in love with her. From Texas to Chile, Mexico to New York City, Berlin finds beauty in the darkest places and darkness in the seemingly pristine. Evening in Paradise is an essential piece of Berlin’s oeuvre, a jewel-box follow-up for new and old fans.

About Lucia Berlin

Lucia Berlin (1936–2004) worked brilliantly but sporadically throughout the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. Her stories are inspired by her early childhood in various western mining towns; her glamorous teenage years in Santiago, Chile; three failed marriages; a long-term problem with alcoholism; her years spent in Berkeley, New Mexico, and Mexico City; and the various jobs she later held to support her writing and her four sons. Sober and writing steadily by the 1990s, she took a visiting writer’s post at the University of Colorado Boulder in 1994 and was soon promoted to associate professor. In 2001, in failing health, she moved to Southern California to be near her sons. She died in 2004 in Marina del Rey. Her first posthumous collection, A Manual for Cleaning Women, was named one of the New York Times Book Review’s Ten Best Books of 2015.

About Kyla Garcia

Kyla Garcia is an AudioFile Earphones Award–winning narrator. Born and raised in Hoboken, New Jersey, she discovered acting at the age of eight when she played Lady Macbeth in a children’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s tragedy. She made her off-Broadway debut at fifteen when she played Dorothy in Oz: A Twisted Musical. Eleven years after she discovered her passion for acting, she would go on to play Lady Macbeth once again in London at the Globe Theatre, where she studied Shakespeare during her third year at Mason Gross School of the Arts. She received her BFA in acting from Rutgers University.

Reviews

Goodreads review by karen on February 19, 2019

this is one of those times i feel lousy for having accepted a free copy of a book. not only for taking a month to read it and then an additional two months to actually sit down and review it, but (and this is tied in to why it has taken me so long to actually sit down and review it) because i’m not......more

Goodreads review by emma on January 13, 2022

This is the worst Lucia Berlin book, but it also has the best cover. This is probably a lesson to me, specifically, from the universe, about being vain, or about how every rose has its thorns, or something like that. But I wouldn't know, because I refuse to hear it. Anyway. Enough about me. It is all......more

Goodreads review by Tadiana ✩Night Owl☽ on November 17, 2019

3.5 stars. Lucia Berlin's first set of literary short stories, A Manual for Cleaning Women: Selected Stories, was posthumously published in 2015 to great critical acclaim. Hence this second set of twenty mostly slice-of-life tales by Berlin, who wrote mostly in the 1960's-80's. With colorful characte......more

Goodreads review by Fabian on October 26, 2020

At the fringes of different worlds... These stories are reports by an inquisitive & magnificently profound voice, from and about PLACES this reviewer himself holds dear, as actual memories. (El Paso, Juarez, Puerto Vallarta, Albuquerque, Mexico D.F., Paris.) Berlin writers about place like no other......more

Goodreads review by Meike on August 01, 2020

Lucia Berlin’s short story collection A Manual for Cleaning Women: Selected Stories, published posthumously in 2015, caused quite a stir and turned the author into a worldwide literary sensation. “Evening in Paradise” is the follow-up and offers 22 more stories that often refer to Berlin’s real life......more

Quotes

“Paradise affirms Berlin as one of the more underrated writers of her time.” Entertainment Weekly

“Berlin probably deserved a Pulitzer Prize…She managed to write, beautifully, about the hard and the awkward things.” New York Times Book Review

“Berlin’s prose reads like poetry and feels like memory.” Washington Post

“There’s not a single story in Evening in Paradise that’s less than beautiful. Berlin had a gift for language.” NPR

“Thank god for the posthumous revival of Lucia Berlin…Her characters are utterly captivating…and her scenery envelops you.” BuzzFeed

“Her voice sounding seven, seventeen, or like someone’s grandfather; adapting Spanish, Syrian, or New York accents; channeling new mothers or weary middle-aged men…Garcia takes on a classic Hollywood cast.” Booklist (starred audio review)

“No dead author is more alive on the page than Berlin: funny, dark, and so in love with the world.” Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“These works capture human relationships and interactions with care and grace, making the ordinary extraordinary and the extraordinary achingly familiar…Beautifully realized stories with good, old-fashioned virtues.” Library Journal

“Berlin’s writing achieves a dreamy, delightful effect as it provides a look back through time. This collection should further bolster Berlin’s reputation as one of the strongest short story writers of the twentieth century.” Publishers Weekly

Awards

  • Millions.com Pick
  • BuzzFeed Books Pick
  • Literary Hub Pick
  • Publishers Weekly Pick
  • Entertainment Weekly Pick
  • Time Magazine Pick
  • Bustle Pick
  • Refinery29 Pick
  • Nylon Magazine Pick
  • Vulture.com Pick
  • New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice
  • Kirkus Reviews Best Books of the Year
  • Library Journal Best Book of the Year
  • Booklist Pick
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