“In these 35 stories, one struggles to find a sentence that is anything less than jewel–box perfect.” — The New York Times Book Review Gina Berriault is known for the complexity and compassion with which she weaves her characters, and her stories are such models of economy that they seem almost telepathic. In this reissue of her collected stories—twenty years after its first publication—with a new introduction by renowned author and devoted Berriault advocate Peter Orner—we see the deft hand of this well–loved master of the short story at its best. Berriault employs her vital sensibility—sometimes subtly ironic and sometimes achingly raw—to touch on the inevitability of suffering and the nature of individuality, daring to see into the essence of our predicaments. What moves us? What dictates our behavior? What alters us? Her writing is spare, evanescent, pulsing with life and shimmering with life's strange hope. Her stories illustrate the depth of her emotional understanding. “Half the women in the world are right now in bed, theirs or somebody else's, whether it's night or day, whether they want to be or not...” With Women in Their Beds, Berriault's prose—moving, honest, and wise—achieves a mastery of the short story form that was in evidence every step of her long career. She was a completely modern writer, blessed with an exquisite sense of the potency of words and the ability to create moments of empathy that are both disturbing and mysteriously amusing.

A master of the short form, Gina Berriault stands somewhere between Chekhov and Isaac Babel in style and psychological acuity—and in this beautiful new edition of one of her most beloved novellas, she traces the changing relationships between one woman and two fellow novelists. When it was first published, Andre Dubus said of The Lights of Earth , "Like her stories, it's masterly. Its central character is a woman, Ilona Lewis, who confronts loss of earthly love. But Ilona's experience is far more complex than losing a man because he has become a celebrity. It involves the hearts of all of us seeking the lights of earth, the soul's blessing in its long, dark night." Forsaken by her lover as he gains fame as a novelist, Ilona is stirred by the need to remember the brother she left behind long ago. Revealing the precious worth of life that emerges from the depths of loss, The Lights of Earth is a deeply moving exploration of the soul and a masterwork of style and psychological acuity from one of the most celebrated voices in contemporary fiction. Gina Berriault’s work as a storywriter of great psychological empathy and extraordinary elegance and subtlety was widely praised at the end of her life and, with this reissue of one of her more celebrated short novels, her work can be discovered by a new generation of readers.

Explores the experiences of characters, including a writer searching for a refugee novelist, a woman losing her sanity, a lonely middle-aged alcoholic, and a man coping with his mistress' death