A Manual for Cleaning Women: Selected Stories

Many great writers have been alcoholics, but few have written about the chaos and destruction of drinking with such precision, detachment and calm. There are stunning moments throughout this collection. A truly wonderful book.

A fabulous, unexpected book. Consisting of about 40 or so brief vigenettes which the reader eventually begins to understand that are connected, but not necessarily in time, or character. I usually read biographies or memoirs and this, in its way, is one, but the reader never knows it until meditating on its trail of life after the end of the book. The author, alas, is deceased, but I look forward to reading more of her writings in the future.
Awesome.

Lucia Berlin's writing is raw, powerful, and very personal. This collection of stories follows her life from challenges she faced in her youth, to alcoholism and bouts of depression, and then coping with old age and reflecting back on her life. Would she have done anything different? She addresses this in the last story in the collection.
Parts of it got a little too depressing for my preference, but that's reality. I can't knock this collection for that. It's easy to get wrapped up in several of the stories, identify with how tough life can be, and really appreciate the characters she writes about.

The book actually ran the gamut from hopeful to thoughtful, as this is a collection of stories. I chose dark as much is based on alcoholism, coping with difficulty. Some stories were funny, some hit the gut. Deep look into troubled souls from someone who had been there. Good read.

The book actually ran the gamut from hopeful to thoughtful, as this is a collection of stories. I chose dark as much is based on alcoholism, coping with difficulty. Some stories were funny, some hit the gut. Deep look into troubled souls from someone who had been there. Good read.

Startling fresh stories that accumulate images of places—Albuquerque, Mexico City for example—and a character who emerges from the many narrators—the persona of Lucia Berlin. She writes with unaccustomed directness of person in a voice of experienced, accepted pain that stores up no guilt or pride and reveals vaster sophistication in flashes of vocabulary and allusion, while wryly, funnily, observing the ordinary, the demeaned, the almost vanquished. Look at that author's photograph on the back flap: that attractive, bright, slightly turned-away image reflects the prose you'll read.

(The categories above force judgment: how, for example, can one indicate the way the story is narrated when the book collects many stories?

These stories become repetitive after a while. There are a few great sentences in each one. On the whole, however, the collection should have been more carefully curated and the stories more carefully edited to reduce the repetition.

So impeccably written and edited there is not an extra word, but the images evoked are crystal clear. Berlin is a skilled and artful writer who gives us full character studies not through description so much as action. Even the most unpleasant characters are fully drawn so that we can in some way we understand their plight.
It was difficult to put down the book through the first reading. Although it is a series of interrelated stories, the transitions can be startling. In a good way. I have already returned to some of the stories at random. The words glisten.