A Manual for Cleaning Women: Picador Collection

Lucia Berlin (1936-2004) worked brilliantly but sporadically throughout the 1960s, '70s and '80s. Her stories are culled from her early childhood in various Western mining towns; her glamorous teenage years in Santiago, Chile; three failed marriages; a lifelong problem with alcoholism; her years spent in Berkeley, New Mexico, and Mexico City; and the various jobs she later held to support her writing and her four sons, including as a high-school teacher, a switchboard operator, a physician's assistant, and a cleaning woman.

The world just goes along. Nothing much matters, you know? I mean really matters. but then sometimes, just for a second, you get this grace, this belief that it does matter, a whole lot.

With an introduction from Lydia Davis

Lucia Berlin’s stories in A Manual for Cleaning Women make for one of the most remarkable unsung collections in twentieth-century American fiction.

With extraordinary honesty and magnetism, Lucia Berlin invites us into her rich, itinerant life: the drink and the mess and the pain and the beauty and the moments of surprise and of grace, with a voice is witty, anarchic, compassionate, and completely unique.

Part of the Picador Collection, a new series showcasing the best of modern literature.

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