RaveThe Guardian (UK)Kirchick has spent a decade uncovering long-hidden stories that have been lost from history. At 800 pages, including well over 100 just for notes and sources, the scope of Secret City feels momentous ... Kirchick astutely points out that the fear of homosexuality has been a driver of presidential politics ... Throughout Secret City, Kirchick does a masterful job of conveying the flavor of homophobia in each historical era, while using impeccable research to vividly characterize the dozens of various individuals at play in these stories ... Because of this rich attention to detail, Secret City also offers a vivid chronicle of the waves of liberation and backlash that characterized the growing acceptance of LGBTQ+ rights in the 20th century.
Lucia Berlin
PositiveBarnes & Noble Review\"[Welcome Home is] less a narrative than a picaresque travelogue that’s unified by Berlin’s characteristic existence, perpetual nomadism, and oblique perspective. It’s a very strangely constructed, highly original memoir, and I’m so disappointed that the entire book never had an opportunity to come into existence ... With the assistance of Berlin’s son Jeff, her editors have also included photos of her interspersed from throughout her life, and they add very much to the text ... From this too-brief text emerges a multi-faceted and complex woman whose misgivings over the world she was born into seem destined to move her toward a transformation that, unfortunately, we never get to see.\
Lucia Berlin
RaveBarnes & Noble Review\"The two recent volumes collecting her work... demonstrate that she was a true master of the short story ... In terms of skill and theme, her work is in the category of Mavis Gallant, Alice Munro, and Marilynne Robinson, with Berlin charting a marginal, postwar side of America that is not commonly seen in our literature ... Perhaps most impressive is Berlin’s knack for capturing the characteristic feel of each era of life: whether the child’s naïve eagerness or the grown woman’s languid contemplation, she is a writer who does it all ... [Berlin] possesses the indispensable talent of effortlessly zeroing in on what is timeless and elemental in our lives. Berlin is a poet of those moments destined to dwell eternally in our memories with an undiminished vividness and magnitude, no matter how often we examine them as we age.\
