![]() ![]() ![]() The constant activity serves as a reminder that a still, quiet life is an unaffordable luxury for the cleaning woman. Over the course of her work-week, the cleaning woman encounters a vivid palette of characters and homes, ranging from a psychiatrist couple to an elderly woman suffering from Parkinson’s. The collection’s title piece, in particular, centers around a mode of transportation-the bus-and concerns a cleaning woman going through the motions of her work-week as she processes the loss of her late husband. The 43-story collection often rings autobiographical-Berlin worked numerous jobs, suffered from alcoholism, and lived in many of the cities found in the book such as El Paso, Santa Fe, and Berkeley-and brims with perceptive observations of working class life.Ī whirlwind of memories, characters, and settings, all of which ride on an undercurrent of dark humor, nearly every story in the collection is captivating in its constant motion and minute detail. Presently, there is no better representation of Lucia Berlin’s (1936-2004) work than A Manual for Cleaning Women, a vibrant (albeit hefty) collection of Berlin’s most notable short stories. ![]() Book Content Warning: sexual assault, substance abuse, gore ![]()
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