Babe in Paradise: Fiction

Although all the characters in Babe in Paradise live in Los Angeles, none of them partake of the glamour and success that mark the city. Marisa Silver's characters -- a community-college teacher, an equipment-rental store manager, a limousine driver, and a struggling actress among them -- live on the periphery of the city's allure. Babe of the title story must confront the complete dissolution of her past when a fire threatens to engulf the hillside house she and her mother share. A car-jacking forces the young husband and wife of "What I Saw from Where I Stood" to confront the loss of a child and the way in which this loss has reshaped their marriage.The unforgettable characters in Babe in Paradise dwell in the Los Angeles of seismic geological change, of racial unease, of parched desert landscapes littered with the detritus of urban ambition. Silver has a genius for making us care deeply about her characters, their everyday desperations and hard-won hopes.