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"The Day I Ate Whatever I Wanted — and Other Small Acts of Liberation," by Elizabeth Berg (Random House, 242 pages, $23).

Elizabeth Berg understands women. Over the course of 20 books she has staked out an emotional terrain populated by women who feel the myriad aspects of joy and sorrow.

Her new collection, "The Day I Ate Whatever I Wanted — and Other Small Acts of Liberation," is a baker's dozen stories expressing perspectives from a variety of women. 

The title piece whets our appetites for what follows. The narrator is feeling rebellious as she sets out on a food binge of massive proportions. 

Her all-consuming food lust is charged with eroticism. "So dinner. You can imagine it, can't you? The mushrooms sautéed in butter lying seductively over the steak. The potato, buried under butter, bacon, green onion and sour cream. The two desserts sitting side by side, can you see them?" This reviewer saw them all too well as he ravaged our pantry.

Berg slathers her theme across the next story, "Returns and Exchanges." This narrator accepts herself.  "She'd get a martini — Bombay Sapphire gin, extra dry, three blue-cheese-stuffed olives. She'd get a huge steak, French fries, sautéed mushrooms and creamed spinach. A nice Cabernet. She'd get a rich chocolate dessert, complete with whipped cream and chocolate shavings. She weighed 176 pounds and her socks didn't match, and she was going out with the man who really loved her."

In "The Party" a group of women are having a frank discussion about men. The party breaks up. Berg has a gently nuanced way of describing it. "Our group fell apart in a sad, slow-motion sort of way, as when petals leave a blossom past its prime." 

This narrator feels sadness and then anger when she spots her husband holding forth in conversation across the room. "I thought, here is how I feel about men: I am angry at them for the way they sling their advantage about — interrupting, taking over, forcing endings, pretending to not understand what equality between the sexes necessitates, thus ensuring that they are always and forever the ones who say when."

One story in particular stands out. "Rain" is narrated by a middle-aged woman who has reconnected with a man she's always desired from afar. "I thought about how handsome he used to be, and I thought about how I used to look in those days, too, my black hair nearly to my waist, my clothes as Janis Joplin-ish as I could get them: feathers and pearls, bell-bottoms so wide they looked like ball gowns, patchouli-scented velvet-and-lace tops ... Michael and I had flirted with each other, and I think at various times had contemplated having a relationship ..."

The desire for food that links many of these stories serves as a metaphor for women's desires for beauty, self-esteem and love. As these women face the toll that time has exacted some of them find a hard-won clarity — that while physical beauty becomes a fleeting memory, only true love lasts.

Book reviewer Vick Mickunas blogs daily about books at www.DaytonDailyNews.com/booknook. Contact him at vick@vickmickunas.com.

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