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 here: 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.
Lucia Berlin was a short story writer with a small, devoted following during her lifetime. She rose to sudden literary fame eleven years after her death, in 2015, with Farrar, Straus and Giroux's publication of a volume of selected stories, A Manual For Cleaning Women, edited by Stephen Emerson. It hit the New York Times bestseller list and, within a few weeks, had outsold all her previous books combined.