Review: A Manual for Cleaning Women by Lucía Berlin
Before 2015 not a lot of people had heard of Lucía Berlin.
During her 68 years of life, she wrote short stories and was a protégé of Saul Bellow. She worked cleaning houses, as a secretary, as a nurse, and as a teacher. She lived in Alaska, California, Santiago de Chile, New York, and Mexico City. She suffered from alcoholism, was divorced 3 times, and had 4 children, among many more things suitable for much more than one lifetime and one person.
She died in 2004, after a battle with lung cancer. 11 years later, her short story collection A Manual for the Cleaning Women became one of the best sellers in The New York Times in 2015 and was part of a large number of best of the year-end lists.
In any other review, the life of the author might not be that important, but Berlin’s work is so based on – and ingrained in – her life, she seems to bring a new meaning to the genre of self fiction, with some stories so intimate and nonfictional that they make you feel like a friend is telling you an anecdote.
“I exaggerate a lot and I get fiction and reality mixed up, but I don’t actually ever lie,” she says nonchalantly in one of her stories.
“All pain is real”
Reading Berlin is like getting punched in the face. She forces you to look at the ugliest parts of humanity while writing in such a direct and entrancing way you can’t escape it.
From the first few stories, you’ll realize you’re in for a ride. And even though they’re not obviously connected, many themes repeat along the 470-pages, including alcoholism, racism, abuse, trauma, and pain.
In one of the stories a character, who’s missing a leg, complains of having a strong pain in that leg:
“My legs! Lord Jesus stop the pain in my legs!”
“Hush John,” Florida said. “That’s only phantom pain.”
“Is it real?” I asked her.
She shrugged. “All pain is real.”
It’s not an easy book to read – it took me about 6 months cause I had to take pauses to process the punches that each story would leave me with. Berlin writes in such a direct and simple way that it may seem easy, but she always pulls out the rug from under her readers for some grand reveal or quote that left me thinking for days.
The collection is connected as well by repeat characters who appear in many of the stories – most of which are told in the first person, from the viewpoint of a little girl, an adventurous teenager, a woman dealing with alcoholism, or an old woman reflecting on her life.
A dying sister, an alcoholic mother, and an abusive grandfather reappear and reappear, and bring a sense of uneasiness and inevitability to the life of the narrator, who asks for empathy towards all people in her stories and never exactly for herself.
“Everything good or bad that has occurred in my life has been predictable and inevitable, especially the choices and actions that have made sure I am now utterly alone.”
After finishing this book, I can’t help but feel empathy, sympathy, and admiration for Lucia Berlin. I’ll be reading the rest of her work.
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