Reviews tagging 'Sexual assault'

A Manual for Cleaning Women: Selected Stories by Lucia Berlin

3 reviews

kickitupanotch7's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional funny reflective sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Domestic abuse, Addiction, Animal death, Blood, Cancer, Child abuse, Cursing, Death, Drug use, Death of parent, Racism, Sexual content, Pregnancy, Sexual assault, Abortion, Alcoholism, Gore, Medical content, Medical trauma, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Racial slurs, Suicide attempt, Infidelity, Injury/Injury detail, Police brutality, Rape, Sexual violence, and Terminal illness

Moderate: Adult/minor relationship, Classism, Ableism, Lesbophobia, and Abandonment

andybeagle333's review

dark emotional funny reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Drug use and Drug abuse

Moderate: Sexual assault and Sexual harassment

meowrilena's review

challenging dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

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.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Alcohol, Abortion, Alcoholism, Death, Child abuse, and Child death

Moderate: Cancer, Sexual assault, and Sexual content