A Manual for Cleaning Women: Selected Stories

For various reasons (let's count in the fact that this book is almost 400 pages long), it took me so long to read this book. I didn't know Lucia Berlin before randomly choosing this selection of her best short-stories. 90% of the books I have in my e-book reader are the result of weird lists of "books to read" I've found on the internet while I was panicking about having an empty e-book reader. So I don't know to which category this book used to belong. Was it in the "book to read written by women"? "Book to read if you want to get into contemporary short-stories"? I digress. It's difficult to me to say "I loved this book" because it sounds rather superficial and not accurate. It's complicated, as they say. I was fascinated by this book. Many narrators take the pen, but they seem to be linked together and a couple of stories in, you understand that it's always her, Lucia, writing about her life. Auto-fiction. You understand it because all these short stories are linked by themes. Alcoholism, the Spanish language, Latin America, working odd jobs... they all come back. Was she even trying to hide it? If after a dozen pages you start to think "I see what you're doing here, Lucia", even style wise, you cannot help but being compelled by her writing. Raw, real. As I am writing this I kinda wish there was more to read about her life, but, at the same time, I feel like I've read it all in this book.

A bit of a slog. It's long, often tedious, and is infused with pain: alcoholism, addiction, emotional and physical abuse. Loneliness. Our deep yearning for connection. It took me over a week to read, it wasn't a book I was eager to pick back up.

And yet... her writing, her sensibility; tenderness, compassion, wistfulness. Berlin had tremendous insight and awareness. Her writing is graceful, with a simple clarity kind of like a summer mid-morning: not diffuse but not harsh, just the kind of light that lets you take it all in, the good and bad with less of the judgment than our brain so regularly tries to slap onto everyone. I'm really struck by how complex her characters can be - even in the shortest of the stories we see lives rich with ambiguity and depth.

The stories themselves — and this may be a slight spoiler but I would've liked to have known it before reading — are in large part inspired by her experiences but not autobiographical nor even connected. They're stories, and they're independent. Kind of like one of those refrigerator magnet word kits, Berlin picks from a set of building blocks: alcoholism, abusive mother, sister with cancer, growing up in Chile, work experience as cleaning lady or medical aide, life in Oakland or Albuquerque or Boulder or New York. Put them in a bag, shake them up, pick a few tiles to start with, and build on those. And I know that sounds so dismissive, but I don't mean it that way, I just can't think of a better analogy. The stories begin to feel familiar, but they're inconsistent with each other, and that confused me until I realized that they're what-ifs, not a narrative.

Much as I'd like to rate it five stars, I can't: it really was too long for me, and a nontrivial number of the stories were meh or less. But please don't let that put you off: this is a beautiful voice that you will be glad to discover.

 The truth? I was worried that this collection of [a:Lucia Berlin|157697|Lucia Berlin|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1463323021p2/157697.jpg]'s short stories was going to be a rant about the well-to-do by an oppressed minority—a biography of a housekeeper from the Philippines who works in Beverly Hills, say. That kind of writing has its place and value, but in my case reading it is a been there, done that proposition.
 These stories have great depth and variety and are so brilliant that I'm ashamed never to have heard of Berlin (1936–2004) before reading them. They are deep and at times disturbing, but only in a way that makes you want to read more of them. Some critics compare her to Raymond Carver, but I agree more with those who emphasize that Berlin was entirely her own.
 If you are the kind of reader who prefers novels to short stories, this would be a good book for you. The order they're presented in make them nearly a memoir.