![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() In “Let Me See You Smile”, one character is described as possessing “a compassionate curiosity about everyone”, and the same was clearly true of Berlin herself. In “Tiger Bites”, a story detailing the horrors of a backstreet abortion clinic in Mexico, it is the warmth and wicked fun of the relationship between the narrator and her glamorous cousin that remain to the fore.īerlin had many jobs during her life and she is an acute chronicler of institutions and the often overlooked world of work – in particular the low-prestige, low-paid work of nurses, cleaners, administrators and supply teachers. Loneliness and shame creep through stories set in hospitals, detox clinics, old people’s homes and prisons, but despite the frequently bleak territory Berlin’s writing is characterised by an enormous appetite for life, for humour and for love. In “So Long”, a marriage to a heroin addict is described as encompassing both “times of intense Technicolor happiness and times that were sordid and frightening”, and that goes some way to capturing the emotional range of the collection. Her eventful life provides the subject matter for these stories. ![]()
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