Scan barcode
A review by elbowgrip_and_emdash
A Manual for Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin
4.0
There is a lot to love about this collection of short stories while at the same time plenty to criticize. I think when Berlin is good, she's especially good, and she's bad, she's especially bad (there were definitely stories in this collection that I questioned the wisdom and purpose of). I think she flourishes with her longer stories and flops with her shorter stories. One of my least favorite stories was a three-pager called "Electric Car, El Paso," which seemed to be about nothing but the convenient, too-neat ending (which I'm almost certain the writer would have thought was genius). Although, I do think it's harder to appreciate shorter short stories when they're in a collection rather than standing alone (I read this under a classroom deadline), and maybe that's why I don't like and fail to appreciate the supposed brilliance of "My Jockey," as just one example.
Some of my favorites were "Todo Luna, Todo Aña," "Grief," Let Me See You Smile," and "Mijito"—the longer stories, the stories (generally speaking) with multiple points of view. When I got into these stories, I didn't want them to end. She's surprisingly novelistic in scope; of course, her stories aren't exactly the traditional short story shape anyway (and I really like the two that call attention to themselves as short stories, "Point of View" and "Here It Is Saturday). She's blunt in an appreciable way about her character's struggles with alcohol and sexual abuse—that is, the secret of the story is never that the character is an alcoholic or was sexually abused as a child, but rather a fact of life, an additional complication that the characters are aware of to lesser and greater extents. I was surprised by how ugly some of her characters are, yet how I deeply I felt for them. I don't know if I've ever read a work of fiction that has felt so consistently real, right down to the tiniest, most ridiculous details (I do know that some of her stories are autofiction, but they can't all possibly be, can they?). She's not a flowery writer. Her prose isn't "beautiful," but there's certainly something beautiful about it, when the story comes together in the end.
Some of my favorites were "Todo Luna, Todo Aña," "Grief," Let Me See You Smile," and "Mijito"—the longer stories, the stories (generally speaking) with multiple points of view. When I got into these stories, I didn't want them to end. She's surprisingly novelistic in scope; of course, her stories aren't exactly the traditional short story shape anyway (and I really like the two that call attention to themselves as short stories, "Point of View" and "Here It Is Saturday). She's blunt in an appreciable way about her character's struggles with alcohol and sexual abuse—that is, the secret of the story is never that the character is an alcoholic or was sexually abused as a child, but rather a fact of life, an additional complication that the characters are aware of to lesser and greater extents. I was surprised by how ugly some of her characters are, yet how I deeply I felt for them. I don't know if I've ever read a work of fiction that has felt so consistently real, right down to the tiniest, most ridiculous details (I do know that some of her stories are autofiction, but they can't all possibly be, can they?). She's not a flowery writer. Her prose isn't "beautiful," but there's certainly something beautiful about it, when the story comes together in the end.