Was ich sonst noch verpasst habe

She is considered the best-kept secret of American literature. Lucia Berlin is the rediscovery of the year and is compared to Raymond Carver, Richard Yates, or Grace Paley. Her stories reflect a restless life full of breaks. They feature women whose fates she captures: single mothers, recovering alcoholics, housekeepers, nurses, and secretaries. The themes include mothers and daughters, failing marriages, and pregnant girls, as well as immigrants, wealth and poverty, loneliness, love, and violence. The settings are laundromats, cafes and restaurants, hospitals, and doctors' offices. Here, the unexpected occurs, the small wonders of life are revealed, and tragedies unfold, which Lucia Berlin explores with fine humor at times, with melancholy at others, but always with profound empathy.