This book was on someone's recommended list so I added it to my paperbackswap.com wish list and received it quite a while back. It's 399 pages of short stories so I figured it would be a quick read when I started it a couple months ago. I just finished it a few days ago. On Amazon, this book has 2600+ reviews with 88% being 4- and 5-stars. I'm baffled this hot mess of a book has such a high rating.
Almost all of the stories are told in the first person. Only it's not necessarily the same person from one story to the next. In fact, one chapter ("Let Me Make You Smile") had two characters who spoke in the first person so that was confusing. There was one character--Carlotta--who was the narrator in several chapters. It would have been helpful if all the Carlotta stories were grouped together with a section titled "Carlotta." Pretty much all of the folks in these stories are alcoholics (according to the author's bio, she was an alcoholic), drug addicts, survivors of domestic trauma, etc. Most of the characters were unlikeable.
There is a three-page bio of author Lucia Berlin. From the bio, it's clear that Berlin wrote many of the stories based on her own experiences as many of them are set in locales where she lived growing up. Also, one of the stories is about the narrator's grandfather who is a dentist in TX and the bio reveals Berlin had a grandfather who was a well known dentist in a certain town in TX. Berlin's father worked in the mining industry and had jobs in different states as well as in So. America. Some of the stories are set in these same locales.
This is not a book that would be considered a "light" or "beach" read. It's dark and depressing.
Almost all of the stories are told in the first person. Only it's not necessarily the same person from one story to the next. In fact, one chapter ("Let Me Make You Smile") had two characters who spoke in the first person so that was confusing. There was one character--Carlotta--who was the narrator in several chapters. It would have been helpful if all the Carlotta stories were grouped together with a section titled "Carlotta." Pretty much all of the folks in these stories are alcoholics (according to the author's bio, she was an alcoholic), drug addicts, survivors of domestic trauma, etc. Most of the characters were unlikeable.
There is a three-page bio of author Lucia Berlin. From the bio, it's clear that Berlin wrote many of the stories based on her own experiences as many of them are set in locales where she lived growing up. Also, one of the stories is about the narrator's grandfather who is a dentist in TX and the bio reveals Berlin had a grandfather who was a well known dentist in a certain town in TX. Berlin's father worked in the mining industry and had jobs in different states as well as in So. America. Some of the stories are set in these same locales.
This is not a book that would be considered a "light" or "beach" read. It's dark and depressing.
