I realise I'm late to the party, but Lucia Berlin is such a great writer. Why did no one tell me? There's sadness in her stories, humor, compassion, curiosity for humanity. Many don't have much of a plot, but they are pieces in the narrative threads that run through the book, and that are largely autobiographic. Some of these threads are the writer's alcoholism a broader tendency towards self-destruction and powerful love affairs. I generally have little patience for this: yes, you are a broody American genius who does not fit in (hello Kerouac, hello Bukowski, hello Faulkner, hello Miller, hello Burroughs, why it's getting crowded in here...), cool, we get it, what else? Not only did I not found it annoying in this case, but I thought it was INTERESTING. I wondered why that's the case, and perhaps it's because Berlin does not wear her 'vices' as badges of honour - though neither does she fall into moralism. Instead, she's capable of exploring how her choices affected other people, too, how they shaped her relations: the good, the tragic, the ugly, the heartwarming. What can I say, I loved this book.