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Where I Live Now: Stories 1993-1998
In Where I Live Now , Berlin contemplates the human condition with a compassionate understanding. Berlin's vision is sometimes remorseful, sometimes resigned, always courageous. The elusive nature of happiness is a compelling theme the survivors in these stories―many of them society's marginal or excluded people, fighting alcohol or drug addiction, bearing emotional scars―recognize it all too well.
240 pages, Paperback
First published March 1, 1999
48 people are currently reading
1127 people want to read
About the author
Lucia Berlin
42 books976 followersBerlin began publishing relatively late in life, under the encouragement and sometimes tutelage of poet Ed Dorn. Her first small collection, Angels Laundromat was published in 1981, but her published stories were written as early as 1960. Several of her stories appeared in magazines such as The Atlantic and Saul Bellow’s little magazine The Noble Savage.
Berlin published six collections of short stories, but most of her work can be found in three later volumes from Black Sparrow Books: Homesick: New and Selected Stories, So Long: Stories 1987-92 and Where I Live Now: Stories 1993-98.
Berlin was never a bestseller, but was widely influential within the literary community. She aspired to Chekhov's objectivity and refusal to judge. She has also been widely compared to Raymond Carver and Richard Yates. One of her most memorable achievements was the stunning one-page story "My Jockey," which captured a world, a moment and a panoramic movement in five quick paragraphs. It won the Jack London Short Prize for 1985. Berlin also won an American Book Award in 1991 for Homesick, and was awarded a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Berlin published six collections of short stories, but most of her work can be found in three later volumes from Black Sparrow Books: Homesick: New and Selected Stories, So Long: Stories 1987-92 and Where I Live Now: Stories 1993-98.
Berlin was never a bestseller, but was widely influential within the literary community. She aspired to Chekhov's objectivity and refusal to judge. She has also been widely compared to Raymond Carver and Richard Yates. One of her most memorable achievements was the stunning one-page story "My Jockey," which captured a world, a moment and a panoramic movement in five quick paragraphs. It won the Jack London Short Prize for 1985. Berlin also won an American Book Award in 1991 for Homesick, and was awarded a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 35 reviews
January 7, 2022
This book was doubly a good read, because:
a) it had stories by Lucia Berlin I hadn't read yet, allowing me to enjoy a delightful new reading experience, and
b) it had stories by Lucia Berlin I had read already, so I could fly through reading it.
The nicest thing I can say about a book is that I enjoyed it, but, due to my complex involving reading a book every day, the second nicest thing I can say (and it's a close second) is that I finished it expeditiously.
This wasn't my very favorite of the Lucia Berlin canon - in fact, it was probably my third, or maybe fourth, which makes sense. When people compile the very best works of your life multiple times, the stories that tend to be leftover aren't, like, bringing the house down comparatively.
But it did check that quick-read box.
Also, there is a story here involving a runaway grandma that I am quite partial to. If I ever have to live to grandma age, through some error of the universe, I am sure I will be involved in petty crime and faux kidnapping too.
Bottom line: Good stuff. Pretty good, at least.
3.5
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currently-reading updates
part of my ongoing love letter to lucia berlin
clear ur sh*t book 39
quest 18: free space
a) it had stories by Lucia Berlin I hadn't read yet, allowing me to enjoy a delightful new reading experience, and
b) it had stories by Lucia Berlin I had read already, so I could fly through reading it.
The nicest thing I can say about a book is that I enjoyed it, but, due to my complex involving reading a book every day, the second nicest thing I can say (and it's a close second) is that I finished it expeditiously.
This wasn't my very favorite of the Lucia Berlin canon - in fact, it was probably my third, or maybe fourth, which makes sense. When people compile the very best works of your life multiple times, the stories that tend to be leftover aren't, like, bringing the house down comparatively.
But it did check that quick-read box.
Also, there is a story here involving a runaway grandma that I am quite partial to. If I ever have to live to grandma age, through some error of the universe, I am sure I will be involved in petty crime and faux kidnapping too.
Bottom line: Good stuff. Pretty good, at least.
3.5
------------------
currently-reading updates
part of my ongoing love letter to lucia berlin
clear ur sh*t book 39
quest 18: free space
May 17, 2015
I randomly heard about Lucia Berlin while reading an interview (maybe Lydia Davis??) recently. On a whim I bought this book not really sure what to expect. This has some of the best writing and tragic characters I've read in a while, and from somebody I'd never heard of. This has shades of Yates, but quite distinct too. These are stories of Oakland, Texas, Colorado, and Mexico involving people born without much of a chance. She paints these people empathetically. So empathetically, that I have a suspicion--especially after reading her bio--that she is in many of these characters or has dealt with many of them in her life. Great book, but also an incredibly tough one. She's also funny as hell, in a dark way, which makes the brutal aspects of this go down easy.
June 28, 2020
I like Lucia Berlin’s stories so much. Really glad I still have a few of her books left to read.
March 9, 2019
She’s described as a female Raymond Carver, and in many ways that is spot on. I therefore loved every word she wrote. Will be going back to read more of her. I didn’t get to read all the stories because I had to return the book but loved all the ones I read.
August 29, 2018
Nunca he creído eso de que las comparaciones son ociosas. Además de ser divertidas (siempre hay alguien que sale mal parado), son una medida para entender lo que nos gusta y lo que no. Desde que me topé con maravilloso “Manual para mujeres de limpieza” a inicios de 2017, Lucia Berlin se convirtió en mi cuentista favorita. Creo que esto fue, en parte, porque sus historias y su forma de narrar me recordaba a mi cuentista favorito: Raymond Carver. Ambos tienen un ojo agudísimo para encontrar profundidad en las historias cotidianas, una sensibilidad para señalar las fallas en las relaciones y un humor que permite al lector respirar entre tanta densidad. Pero Berlin tiene algo que Carver no: ternura. Y, piensen lo que piensen las huestes posmodernas y permanentemente ofendidas por cuestiones de género, me parece obvio que esa característica le viene de ser mujer. La ternura, rasgo eminentemente femenino, no suaviza, sino que actúa como un elemento disonante en las historias de Berlin, haciéndolas mucho más complejas. Entre el alcoholismo, las madres abusivas, las heridas imborrables de la infancia y el tedio de la vida diaria, se aparecen también destellos de generosidad, redención y melancolía. En los cuentos de Carver el horror coexiste con la belleza; en los de Berlin, horror y belleza son dos formas de nombrar una misma cosa. Lucia Berlin se lanza al abismo sonriendo.
December 31, 2016
I read a collection of Lucia Berlin's short stories, A Manuel for Cleaning Women, earlier this year and absolutely loved it. While there are quite a few of the same stories in this collection, there are some different ones as well. It was a treat to revisit some of them, and the ones I hadn't read before were just as good.
September 2, 2011
Awesome war drama from the perspective of a teen.
March 22, 2017
As with the other older collection I read of Berlin's, this ones best stories seem to have been grabbed by the omnibus selected stories that came out a couple of years ago. That said, I still enjoyed reading those that didn't make that larger career-spanning collection. This collection, on the whole, seemed to have more to offer, more accomplished stories, than So Long did.
"Evening in Paradise" essentially recounts the events occuring at a Mexican bar during the filming of a John Huston film. The events are mostly told via the point of view (but third person) of the bar owner, who started off simply and became the owner over the course of his life. He also managed to marry and have a couple of daughters. All is well. Meanwhile, famous actors go in and out of the scenes, and Ava Gardner, who becomes involved with one of the locals. Drunk, she ends up sleeping also with yet another local, and a fight ensues, even as her local boyfriend ends up sleeping with another actress. The bar owner looks on all of the bemusedly. It's the characterizations that make this story feel like slightly more than a curiosity.
"Romance" tells the story of a long-distance love affair and the misunderstandings that spell its eventual doom. Both partners also cannot move from their home states of New York and California because of custody issues with their children, so they tackle love by phone and by cross-country plane trips that take a toll on their finances. When said finances go awry, they have cause to doubt the commitment of the other. As odd as the circumstances are in the story, it seemed true to how many fights in a relationship unfold.
"The Wives" recounts a visit between two ex-wives of one man, as that man is engaged to be married to yet another woman. Will they go to the wedding? Will they support the marriage? Both wives are firm alcoholics, one openly, one not. Their drinking allows them to commune with one another as they grieve the man they lost and celebrate the man they tossed.
"Sometimes in Summer" is a piece about childhood friendship and about love returned, in the form of a man come to visit Mamie. No one in the family wants that bad man around, save for Mamie, who is smitten. But the kids don't know this, so they take the silver dollars the man offers and bring him around to the woman who seems, actually, better off with the man that with a family that seems more intent on keeping everyone down.
"Del Gozo al Pozo" is another Sally story. In this one, her sister Claudia (i.e., Carlotta in most tales) takes care of her while she dies. In the midst of this, Claudia goes to visit a house that Sally had built for herself but that she will never live in. Meanwhile, the help that Claudia grows so close to is in the midst of losing their jobs, as the government changes powerbrokers. All things change--go south, to death, as the story's title suggests.
"A New Life" is about an older woman who decides to change everything about herself. She drops out of existence and takes a new identity--new clothes and hairdo, new ID, new name. She leaves her grown children wondering what happened. She also leaves a note in her diary, suggesting suicide, which neither of the sons believe possible. They go in search, file a missing persons' report. Meanwhile, Mom takes up with two men at a bar, who eventually hatch a plan to get her back to her old life, one that involves extortion. Are the men out for money or just being nice? We're never really sure, though one suspects the former.
"Elsa's Life" recounts a woman's work on art projects with senior citizens. She's the designated writer, so she takes down oral tales and writes them out for posterity. One of those tellers is Elsa, a woman who seems to have had nothing much in her life but work since coming to the United States--she does not go out. She just irons all day and comes home to watch Spanish TV. The real joys are her family from before her move and her sister, who eventually comes to live with her in a house that they inherit from a man they take care of. Elsa is not good at forging full sentences, however, and when Clarissa is tasked with putting the story to paper, she finds herself having to create, like the writer she is.
"Lost in the Louvre" is a very interesting exercise and one of the collection's better stories not collected elsewhere. It involves a woman who meets death--but not in any sort of fantastic, absurd way. Rather, most of the story consists of a description of the Louvre, as the woman takes daily trips to it during her sojourn in Paris. The descriptions are wonderful, and the narrator's eventual meeting of death is as surprising as it is mundane.
"Evening in Paradise" essentially recounts the events occuring at a Mexican bar during the filming of a John Huston film. The events are mostly told via the point of view (but third person) of the bar owner, who started off simply and became the owner over the course of his life. He also managed to marry and have a couple of daughters. All is well. Meanwhile, famous actors go in and out of the scenes, and Ava Gardner, who becomes involved with one of the locals. Drunk, she ends up sleeping also with yet another local, and a fight ensues, even as her local boyfriend ends up sleeping with another actress. The bar owner looks on all of the bemusedly. It's the characterizations that make this story feel like slightly more than a curiosity.
"Romance" tells the story of a long-distance love affair and the misunderstandings that spell its eventual doom. Both partners also cannot move from their home states of New York and California because of custody issues with their children, so they tackle love by phone and by cross-country plane trips that take a toll on their finances. When said finances go awry, they have cause to doubt the commitment of the other. As odd as the circumstances are in the story, it seemed true to how many fights in a relationship unfold.
"The Wives" recounts a visit between two ex-wives of one man, as that man is engaged to be married to yet another woman. Will they go to the wedding? Will they support the marriage? Both wives are firm alcoholics, one openly, one not. Their drinking allows them to commune with one another as they grieve the man they lost and celebrate the man they tossed.
"Sometimes in Summer" is a piece about childhood friendship and about love returned, in the form of a man come to visit Mamie. No one in the family wants that bad man around, save for Mamie, who is smitten. But the kids don't know this, so they take the silver dollars the man offers and bring him around to the woman who seems, actually, better off with the man that with a family that seems more intent on keeping everyone down.
"Del Gozo al Pozo" is another Sally story. In this one, her sister Claudia (i.e., Carlotta in most tales) takes care of her while she dies. In the midst of this, Claudia goes to visit a house that Sally had built for herself but that she will never live in. Meanwhile, the help that Claudia grows so close to is in the midst of losing their jobs, as the government changes powerbrokers. All things change--go south, to death, as the story's title suggests.
"A New Life" is about an older woman who decides to change everything about herself. She drops out of existence and takes a new identity--new clothes and hairdo, new ID, new name. She leaves her grown children wondering what happened. She also leaves a note in her diary, suggesting suicide, which neither of the sons believe possible. They go in search, file a missing persons' report. Meanwhile, Mom takes up with two men at a bar, who eventually hatch a plan to get her back to her old life, one that involves extortion. Are the men out for money or just being nice? We're never really sure, though one suspects the former.
"Elsa's Life" recounts a woman's work on art projects with senior citizens. She's the designated writer, so she takes down oral tales and writes them out for posterity. One of those tellers is Elsa, a woman who seems to have had nothing much in her life but work since coming to the United States--she does not go out. She just irons all day and comes home to watch Spanish TV. The real joys are her family from before her move and her sister, who eventually comes to live with her in a house that they inherit from a man they take care of. Elsa is not good at forging full sentences, however, and when Clarissa is tasked with putting the story to paper, she finds herself having to create, like the writer she is.
"Lost in the Louvre" is a very interesting exercise and one of the collection's better stories not collected elsewhere. It involves a woman who meets death--but not in any sort of fantastic, absurd way. Rather, most of the story consists of a description of the Louvre, as the woman takes daily trips to it during her sojourn in Paris. The descriptions are wonderful, and the narrator's eventual meeting of death is as surprising as it is mundane.
August 6, 2022
ooo
ONE
"It's not that I'm worried about the future so much. I'm curious still. It's my past that I can't get rid of, that hits me like a big wave when I least expect it."
--from "A New Life"
ooo
TWO
"There is a bowl of salsa on the table, and hot tortillas in a cloth, but the mushroom and trout smell like a foreign country, like Montana."
--from "Del Goza Al Pozo"
ooo
THREE
Expression: "Del Goza Al Pozo" (from spanishskulduggery.tumblr.com):
This is a very useful expression to do with having a bad day or having bad luck.
It sort of translates as, “Well, that’s just my luck!” A more proverbial-sounding English expression for the same idea is, “When it rains, it pours!”
Literally the expression is: “My joy is in a well/pit.” The expression can also be seen as mi gozo en un foso; “My joy is in a ditch.” They both rhyme, you can use either.
You say this when you’ve got terrible luck or bad things keep happening one after the other. So, imagine it starts to rain and you’ve forgotten your umbrella… now’s the time to say mi gozo en un pozo.
ONE
"It's not that I'm worried about the future so much. I'm curious still. It's my past that I can't get rid of, that hits me like a big wave when I least expect it."
--from "A New Life"
ooo
TWO
"There is a bowl of salsa on the table, and hot tortillas in a cloth, but the mushroom and trout smell like a foreign country, like Montana."
--from "Del Goza Al Pozo"
ooo
THREE
Expression: "Del Goza Al Pozo" (from spanishskulduggery.tumblr.com):
This is a very useful expression to do with having a bad day or having bad luck.
It sort of translates as, “Well, that’s just my luck!” A more proverbial-sounding English expression for the same idea is, “When it rains, it pours!”
Literally the expression is: “My joy is in a well/pit.” The expression can also be seen as mi gozo en un foso; “My joy is in a ditch.” They both rhyme, you can use either.
You say this when you’ve got terrible luck or bad things keep happening one after the other. So, imagine it starts to rain and you’ve forgotten your umbrella… now’s the time to say mi gozo en un pozo.
Read
May 6, 2020I adored "A Manual for Cleaning Women" by the immensely talented Lucia Berlin. Some of the stories in this collection are repeats, but it's delightful to encounter them nontheless.
Some say Berlin was an early practitioner of auto-fiction (self-fiction); I say, aren't we all to lesser or greater degrees? Her son (one of four) once remarked “Ma wrote true stories, not necessarily autobiographical, but close enough for horseshoes.” I don't think this is what distinguishes her writing. What does, is the way she tells her stories. The minimalist style, the careful detailing, the gradual adding up and meticulous drawing of character. She is masterful, and under appreciated.
"Sighs, the rhythms of our heartbeats, contractions of childbirth, orgasms, all flow into time just as pendulum clocks placed next to one another soon beat in unison." the opening line to "Wait a Minute" p 223
Some say Berlin was an early practitioner of auto-fiction (self-fiction); I say, aren't we all to lesser or greater degrees? Her son (one of four) once remarked “Ma wrote true stories, not necessarily autobiographical, but close enough for horseshoes.” I don't think this is what distinguishes her writing. What does, is the way she tells her stories. The minimalist style, the careful detailing, the gradual adding up and meticulous drawing of character. She is masterful, and under appreciated.
"Sighs, the rhythms of our heartbeats, contractions of childbirth, orgasms, all flow into time just as pendulum clocks placed next to one another soon beat in unison." the opening line to "Wait a Minute" p 223
Read
September 29, 2019Good collection of stories
This is a strong group of well-paced stories about down and out characters, many of whom come from Latin America. Berlin's writing reminds me of Denis Johnson's fiction, especially Jesus's Son, but I like her stuff better because she clearly loves her characters, no matter how messed up they are, and humanizes them in ways that Johnson, with his condescension, never does.
This is a strong group of well-paced stories about down and out characters, many of whom come from Latin America. Berlin's writing reminds me of Denis Johnson's fiction, especially Jesus's Son, but I like her stuff better because she clearly loves her characters, no matter how messed up they are, and humanizes them in ways that Johnson, with his condescension, never does.
December 14, 2022
Utterly brilliant.
Gritty, loving, breathtaking portraits of women in pain, in love, poverty and richness. If you read Berlin's "Manual" you will want to read these stories. Her precise perceptions of people combined with her amazing memory for incident capture a readers imagination.
The best American short story writer in a century.
Gritty, loving, breathtaking portraits of women in pain, in love, poverty and richness. If you read Berlin's "Manual" you will want to read these stories. Her precise perceptions of people combined with her amazing memory for incident capture a readers imagination.
The best American short story writer in a century.
December 26, 2017
Beautifully written. It knocked my socks off. Lucia Berlin can really bring all her characters and settings alive. You feel for the lowlifes, the poor, the weak and whether their fates are good or bad, they are always portrayed as real human beings with all their faults, sorrows and joys.
September 24, 2019
This collection is more hit and miss than her others. But considering how unique Lucia Berlin's voice was and the richness of her life that is infused in each story, it's hard to give this book fewer than five stars. If you love short stories, read everything by Lucia! She deserved it.
July 15, 2020
Lots of the same stories from the other book of hers I read (forgetting the name, but a more recent compilation) but I loved them the first time and loved them again, as well as the new (to me) ones. The stories are raw and beautiful and complicated in a straightforward dressing.
December 27, 2022
Beauty in the mundane and the ordinary, beautiful prose and charming stories, I just love everything Lucia Berlin writes... Some stories I've read before in So Long and A Manual for Cleaning Women and some new and refreshing, I keep finding myself coming back for more!
May 11, 2023
There is something very real about Lucia Berlin's writing, with an idiosyncratic and poignant sense of humor. The people in her stories, even though some of them are alcoholic, and many derelict, Berlin finds a generosity in their lives and her descriptions are full of love.
November 22, 2018
Her stories are so snappy. I love them.
March 12, 2019
Deserves a wider audience.
Unless I’m late to the party and everybody else has already read these wonderful stories. They are real and true and sometimes a bit dark but so is life.
Unless I’m late to the party and everybody else has already read these wonderful stories. They are real and true and sometimes a bit dark but so is life.
July 16, 2019
Lucia is home
September 28, 2019
Some of the stories were amazing.
January 25, 2020
After reading A Manuel for Cleaning Women, you know,
May 26, 2021
Great, just a lot of repeat stories from manual and evening in paradise, think there were only 3 new stories unfortunately in this collection.
Want to read
January 25, 2022REF: Ética para Celia de Ana de Miguel.
August 11, 2023
I read about half and quit. Literary fiction as noir. “Hey, let’s make all the women drunks or junkies. The men too!” Yawn.
May 3, 2025
I love you, Lucia Berlin
December 20, 2018
If you've read So Long, you'll find more of the same kind of stories in this collection. An equally excellent group of tales that seem so real and authentic you will have to believe they are based closely on events in the author's life. The saddest thing for me is to realize we cannot have a novel or two from Lucia Berlin, although her collections with repeated use of characters, especially sister Sally, read almost like novels told in stories. Her style and tone (and characterizations of people from varied strata) are probing and addictive. Her books are something I'd want with me on a desert isle if I was limited in what I could wash ashore with in my survival chest.
November 19, 2024
Looking for an affordable copy of this collection (about $40 is the lowest on Amazon) I came across an eBook offer on Alibris. On the VitalSource Bookshelf app (more for classroom use - they ask you if you are student, faculty, or "other"), with the option to rent for 2 weeks for $2.50 (what I took), up to purchasing the title for $9.99.
Only 4 stories in here that I have not read in any of her other collections. It must have been hard to put together "A Manual for Cleaning Women" - any of the 4 could have appeared in there. None are about her alcoholism, 2 are auto-fiction (including the best, "Del Gozo Al Poso" - another story about her sister dying of cancer, this time with "her" connection to the chauffeur) and 2 stories about others (but with plots that could have been her own at the same time).
Worth the rental.
4.5 out of 5.
Only 4 stories in here that I have not read in any of her other collections. It must have been hard to put together "A Manual for Cleaning Women" - any of the 4 could have appeared in there. None are about her alcoholism, 2 are auto-fiction (including the best, "Del Gozo Al Poso" - another story about her sister dying of cancer, this time with "her" connection to the chauffeur) and 2 stories about others (but with plots that could have been her own at the same time).
Worth the rental.
4.5 out of 5.
February 4, 2019
Berlin’s literary model is Chekhov, but there are extra-literary models too, including the extended jazz solo, with its surges, convolutions, and asides. This is writing of a very high order.
—August Kleinzahler, London Review of Books
This remarkable collection occasionally put me in mind of Annie Proulx’s Accordion Crimes, with its sweep of American origins and places. Berlin is our Scheherazade, continually surprising her readers with a startling variety of voices, vividly drawn characters, and settings alive with sight and sound.
—Barbara Barnard, American Book Review
—August Kleinzahler, London Review of Books
This remarkable collection occasionally put me in mind of Annie Proulx’s Accordion Crimes, with its sweep of American origins and places. Berlin is our Scheherazade, continually surprising her readers with a startling variety of voices, vividly drawn characters, and settings alive with sight and sound.
—Barbara Barnard, American Book Review
Displaying 1 - 30 of 35 reviews