Birds of a Lesser Paradise

With this debut story collection, Bergman establishes herself as a writer with a clear, striking narrative voice and a distinctive view of the world and its animal inhabitants, including our human selves. The story "Housewifely Arts" features a parrot sought by the daughter of its deceased owner as a way to remember the timbre of her mother's voice. Another story involves a woman who works in an animal shelter and refuses to give up any of the animals she keeps at home—three golden retrievers with assorted missing parts and other infirmities, one declawed raccoon, a one-eyed chinchilla, a cormorant, and several feral cats—for the sake of a long-term relationship with a rather nice man who also hunts geese with a bow and arrow. The deals we make with the world around us and with the assorted others who inhabit it, and the solace we find in our fellow creatures, are the larger concerns of these memorable stories.