A Manual For Cleaning Women: Selected Stories

"Cleaning ladies are rare characters in literary fiction; so, too, are clerical workers and hospital staff, but they populate Lucia Berlin’s stories because Berlin herself held those kinds of jobs before her death in 2004. This collection of 43 of Berlin’s stories aims to bring her the recognition she never enjoyed in her own rocky lifetime. You can imagine the narrators of these stories sitting down next to you in a bar after work, ordering a first shot and, unbidden, starting to talk about their crappy days. Berlin had been around the block a few too many times to sugarcoat things. But her one-of-a-kind voice and vision make these stories well worth the pain."