Welcome Home by Lucia Berlin (2018)

An unfinished autobiography by the recently rediscovered author, structured around the many places she lived, supplemented with letters she wrote.

Nonfiction Review: Welcome Home is interesting and occasionally lovely, but not quite necessary for anyone but Lucia Berlin (1936-2004) acolytes. Of course there are many more such (including me) since the publication of her selected stories, A Manual for Cleaning Women was released. The first half of this is an early draft of an autobiography organized around the many (many, many) places she lived, from Alaska to Chile. Some sections are much more finished than others: many are mere sketches, a few rival the best of her stories. It's clear that if she'd completed Welcome Home she would've linked the various houses of her life into a flowing narrative written in the addicting style of her stories. She writes with an honesty and a seemingly autobiographical truth that hooks me every time. The extant narrative ends in 1965. The second half is a selection of letters to and from Berlin, most of them sent to the poet Edward Dorn and his wife. These too end in 1965. When I first picked up Welcome Home my expectations were low as it seemed to be simply a collection of bits and bobs. But then I got caught up in the strength and urgency of her writing and was enjoying myself a little too much when it all came to a halt with a disappointing thud. Ending in mid-sentence: "Buddy lay curled up and shaking violently on the front seat ...".   Ah, if only she had come back to these writings what might've been. For me, the letters were a little less compelling than her narrative, though interesting for the many biographical facts: dating Jay Silverheels; receiving The Elements of Style in 1959; having Denise Levertov as a neighbor in New York. She also talks about the development of her skills, how she hates the "affectation and phoniness" of her writing, the "vanity": "like a little kid passing olives to see if the grown-ups are watching." Happily, she successfully eliminated this perceived flaw, demonstrating that one must first recognize a problem to solve it. Welcome Home is too good to be so short, but it's more of Lucia Berlin and we just have to be satisfied with that.  [3½★]