Squandering the Blue by Kate Braverman

My first introduction to Kate Braverman was in the form of a few photocopied short stories from this book, which is inexplicably still out of print, even after some of her other novels have been reissued in the past decade (though it isn't too hard to track down a cheap used copy, as I did). These stories are all set in Los Angeles--whether in Beverly Hills or seedier locales, the characters deal with addiction and abandonment (by men, by their mothers, by their children). Might be worth a revisit.