On "Where I Live Now" by Lucia Berlin ****

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 occurring 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.

"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.