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A Manual for Cleaning Women: Selected Stories

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A Manual for Cleaning Women: Selected Stories by Lucia Berlin is a collection of autobiographical short stories that offer a glimpse into the author's life experiences. The stories feature characters who navigate through challenging circumstances such as alcoholism, relationship failures, abuse, and death, all while finding moments of grace and hope. Berlin's writing style is described as blunt, gritty, and unflinching, with a focus on detail and matter-of-fact storytelling. The narratives cover a range of themes, from intimate conversations and peripatetic lives to observations of people living in the Southwest of the United States.

Characters:

The characters are complex and realistically portrayed, often reflecting the struggles and triumphs of marginalized individuals.

Writing/Prose:

The writing is characterized by a straightforward, emotionally charged style, rich in detail, with a strong focus on realistic expression.

Plot/Storyline:

The narratives are deeply personal and drawn from the author's life, portraying intense emotional experiences and social observations.

Setting:

The settings are varied, often reflecting the author's own experiences and the cultural backdrop of mid-20th century American life.

Pacing:

The pacing can be described as fluctuating, with some stories requiring deeper contemplation, while others are more immediate and engaging.
Lucia Berlin’s stories are electric, they buzz and crackle as the live wires touch. And in response, the reader’s mind, too, beguiled, enraptured, comes alive, all synapses firing. This is the way we ...

Notes:

Lucia Berlin is not widely known in literary circles but has a powerful body of work.
She authored several collections of short stories and a memoir.
Berlin lived in many places including Arizona, Mexico, and New York.
She worked various jobs: office manager, medical assistant, cleaning lady, and professor.
She struggled with alcoholism and scoliosis throughout her life.
Many characters in her stories reflect her own life experiences.
Berlin was a single mother who raised four children largely alone.
Her writing is often dark but carries themes of hope and resilience.
Critics note her ability to convey deep emotions with simple yet powerful language.
Berlin’s stories often feature characters on the margins of society in mid-20th century America.
Her stories are known for their vivid details and emotional intelligence.
Berlin’s work has been compared to great writers like Hemingway and Alice Munro.
She passed away about ten years ago but gained recognition posthumously.
Her collection 'A Manual for Cleaning Women' is highly regarded and recommended by many readers.

Sensitive Topics/Content Warnings

Triggers might include themes of alcohol abuse, mental health issues, emotional trauma, and depictions of poverty.

Has Romance?

While there are romantic elements present in the stories, they are often complicated by the characters' personal struggles.

From The Publisher:

One of The New York Times Book Review's Ten Best Books of 2015

One of Jezebel's Favorite Books of 2016

A Manual for Cleaning Women compiles the best work of the legendary short-story writer Lucia Berlin.

With the grit of Raymond Carver, the humor of Grace Paley, and a blend of wit and melancholy all her own, Berlin crafts miracles from the everyday, uncovering moments of grace in the Laundromats and halfway houses of the American Southwest, in the homes of the Bay Area upper class, among switchboard operators and struggling mothers, hitchhikers and bad Christians.

Readers will revel in this remarkable collection from a master of the form and wonder how they'd ever overlooked her in the first place.

"Perhaps, with the present collection, Lucia Berlin will begin to gain the attention she deserves." -Lydia Davis

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About the Author:

Lucia Berlin (1936-2004) worked brilliantly but sporadically throughout the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. Her stories are inspired by her early childhood in various Western mining towns; her glamorous teenage years in Santiago, Chile; three failed marriages; a lifelong problem with alcoholism; her years spent in Berkeley, New Mexico, and Mexico City; and the various jobs she later held to support her writing and her four sons. Sober and writing steadily by the 1990s, she took a visiting writer's post at the University of Colorado Boulder in 1994 and was soon promoted to associate professor. In 2001, in failing health, she moved to Southern California to be near her sons. She died in 2004 in Marina del Rey. She is the author of the short story collection A Manual for Cleaning Women.

 
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