Manual for Cleaning Women - Supernormal Reads

No cover — Lucia Berlin, Stephen Emerson, Lydia Davis: Manual for Cleaning Women (2015, Farrar, Straus & Giroux)

English language

Published 2015 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

ISBN:: 978-0-374-71286-0

(1 review)

"Stories from a lost American classic "in the same arena as Alice Munro" (Lydia Davis) "In the field of short fiction, Lucia Berlin is one of America's best kept secrets. That's it. Flat out. No mitigating conditions." --Paul Metcalf A Manual for Cleaning Women compiles the best work of the legendary short-story writer Lucia Berlin. With her trademark blend of humor and melancholy, Berlin crafts miracles from the everyday--uncovering moments of grace in the cafeterias and Laundromats of the American Southwest, in the homes of the Northern California upper classes, and from the perspective of a cleaning woman alone in a hotel dining room in Mexico City. The women of Berlin's stories are lost, but they are also strong, clever, and extraordinarily real. They are hitchhikers, hard workers, bad Christians. With the wit of Lorrie Moore and the grit of Raymond Carver, they navigate a world of jockeys, doctors, and …

"Stories from a lost American classic "in the same arena as Alice Munro" (Lydia Davis) "In the field of short fiction, Lucia Berlin is one of America's best kept secrets. That's it. Flat out. No mitigating conditions." --Paul Metcalf A Manual for Cleaning Women compiles the best work of the legendary short-story writer Lucia Berlin. With her trademark blend of humor and melancholy, Berlin crafts miracles from the everyday--uncovering moments of grace in the cafeterias and Laundromats of the American Southwest, in the homes of the Northern California upper classes, and from the perspective of a cleaning woman alone in a hotel dining room in Mexico City. The women of Berlin's stories are lost, but they are also strong, clever, and extraordinarily real. They are hitchhikers, hard workers, bad Christians. With the wit of Lorrie Moore and the grit of Raymond Carver, they navigate a world of jockeys, doctors, and switchboard operators. They laugh, they mourn, they drink. Berlin, a highly influential writer despite having published little in her lifetime, conjures these women from California, Mexico, and beyond. Lovers of the short story will not want to miss this remarkable collection from a master of the form"--

5 editions

ralentina reviewed A manual for cleaning women by Lucia Berlin

Late to the party

5 stars

I realise I'm late to the party, but Lucia Berlin is such a great writer. Why did no one tell me? There's sadness in her stories, humor, compassion, curiosity for humanity. Many don't have much of a plot, but they are pieces in the narrative threads that run through the book, and that are largely autobiographic. Some of these threads are the writer's alcoholism a broader tendency towards self-destruction and powerful love affairs. I generally have little patience for this: yes, you are a broody American genius who does not fit in (hello Kerouac, hello Bukowski, hello Faulkner, hello Miller, hello Burroughs, why it's getting crowded in here...), cool, we get it, what else? Not only did I not found it annoying in this case, but I thought it was INTERESTING. I wondered why that's the case, and perhaps it's because Berlin does not wear her 'vices' as badges of …

I realise I'm late to the party, but Lucia Berlin is such a great writer. Why did no one tell me? There's sadness in her stories, humor, compassion, curiosity for humanity. Many don't have much of a plot, but they are pieces in the narrative threads that run through the book, and that are largely autobiographic. Some of these threads are the writer's alcoholism a broader tendency towards self-destruction and powerful love affairs. I generally have little patience for this: yes, you are a broody American genius who does not fit in (hello Kerouac, hello Bukowski, hello Faulkner, hello Miller, hello Burroughs, why it's getting crowded in here...), cool, we get it, what else? Not only did I not found it annoying in this case, but I thought it was INTERESTING. I wondered why that's the case, and perhaps it's because Berlin does not wear her 'vices' as badges of honour - though neither does she fall into moralism. Instead, she's capable of exploring how her choices affected other people, too, how they shaped her relations: the good, the tragic, the ugly, the heartwarming. What can I say, I loved this book.

Subjects

Fiction, short stories (single author)