A Manual for Cleaning Women

Selected Stories

By: Lucia Berlin

Narrated by: Thom Rivera, Dawn Harvey, Carol Monda, Hillary Huber, Bernadette Dunne, Kyla Garcia

"I have always had faith that the best writers will rise to the top, like cream, sooner or later, and will become exactly as well-known as they should be - their work talked about, quoted, taught, performed, filmed, set to music, anthologized. Perhaps, with the present collection, Lucia Berlin will begin to gain the attention she deserves." - Lydia Davis, from the foreword

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.

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

©2015 Lucia Berlin (P)2016 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Reads Like Nonfiction

Really wonderful, gritty, personal fiction that reads like nonfiction. I highly recommend this for MFA Creative Writing programs where this type of short story collection is highly emulatable.

Lucia Berlin is so underappreciated

This is the best collection of short stories by an author you've likely never heard of.

Hard to get through

What did you like best about A Manual for Cleaning Women? What did you like least?

I think this would have been much more enjoyable reading instead of listening. The stories jump around too much and it's hard to tell if some of the short stories are connected. I like the way it was written, but again it would have been much more suiting to read it through, because I believe it takes patience, undivided attention and dedication to enjoy it as an audio book. It's more of a heady book.

What do you think your next listen will be?

Something a little more spicy, lively and inspiring.

Would you be willing to try another one of the narrators’s performances?

No, I found the main women a little monotonous. Her performance fell flat and didn't give good opportunity for funny or dramatic material.

Did A Manual for Cleaning Women inspire you to do anything?

Eh...not especially inspiring. Some really nice keepsake sayings and thoughts here and there, but not exceptionally provocative.

A manual for cleaning women.

Yes! Amazing story. Multicultural, family fable.
But like her real life. It all turns out in the end.

gloriously written

just marvelous I am in awe of her honesty and ability to create and maintain a mood she is a masterful storyteller!