A Manual for Cleaning Women

One of The New York Times' 100 Best Books of the 21st Century. International bestseller. A Manual for Cleaning Women compiles the best work of the legendary short-story writer Lucia Berlin. One of The New York Times' 100 Best Books of the Twenty-First Century and a classic of short fiction, Lucia Berlin's A Manual for Cleaning Women was a global sensation upon its publication in 2015, eleven years after its author's death. Largely unheralded throughout her peripatetic life, Berlin was a fiction writer of staggering, singular genius. With the grit of Raymond Carver, the humor of Grace Paley, and a blend of wit and melancholy all her own, Berlin crafted 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. Written over the course of thirty years, the forty-three stories in A Manual for Cleaning Women-collected here in a 10th anniversary edition-are short fiction at its most unforgettable and original, told with unmistakable style by a master of the form.

Lucia Berlin; Edited by Stephen Emerson; Foreword by Lydia Davis

Contents Foreword: "The Story Is the Thing" by Lydia Davis vii Introduction by Stephen Emerson xix Angel's Laundromat / 3 Dr. H. A. Moynihan / 9 Stars and Saints / 17 A Manual for Cleaning Women / 26 My Jockey / 39 El Tim / 41 Point of View / 51 Her First Detox / 56 Phantom Pain / 61 Tiger Bites / 69 Emergency Room Notebook, 1977 / 88 Temps Perdu / 98 Carpe Diem / 106 Toda Luna, Todo Año / 110 Good and Bad / 125 Melina / 137 Friends / 145 Unmanageable / 151 Electric Car, El Paso / 155 Sex Appeal / 159 Teenage Punk / 164 Step / 167 Strays / 170 Grief / 179 Bluebonnets / 194 La Vie en Rose / 203 Macadam / 210 Dear Conchi / 211 Fool to Cry / 221 Mourning / 236 Panteón de Dolores / 242 So Long / 252 A Love Affair / 261 Let Me See You Smile / 272 Mama / 303 Carmen / 310 Silence / 320 Mijito / 333 502 / 356 Here It Is Saturday / 363 B.F. and Me / 376 Wait a Minute / 380 Homing / 388 A Note on Lucia Berlin / 401 Acknowledgments / 405