
A Manual for Cleaning Women
Selected Stories
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By:
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Lucia Berlin
About this listen
"I have always had faith that the best writers will rise to the top, like cream, sooner or later, and will become exactly as well-known as they should be - their work talked about, quoted, taught, performed, filmed, set to music, anthologized. Perhaps, with the present collection, Lucia Berlin will begin to gain the attention she deserves." - Lydia Davis, from the foreword
A Manual for Cleaning Women compiles the best work of the legendary short-story writer Lucia Berlin. With the grit of Raymond Carver, the humor of Grace Paley, and a blend of wit and melancholy all her own, Berlin crafts 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.
Listeners will revel in this remarkable collection from a master of the form and wonder how they'd ever overlooked her in the first place.
©2015 Lucia Berlin (P)2016 Blackstone Audio, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
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In Pulphead, John Jeremiah Sullivan takes us on an exhilarating tour of our popular, unpopular, and at times completely forgotten culture. Simultaneously channeling the gonzo energy of Hunter S. Thompson and the wit and insight of Joan Didion, Sullivan shows us - with a laidback, erudite Southern charm that's all his own - how we really (no, really) live now.
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Interesting Perspectives
- By Nancy on 09-05-24
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Pastoralia
- By: George Saunders
- Narrated by: George Saunders
- Length: 4 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Hailed by Thomas Pynchon as "graceful, dark, authentic, and funny," George Saunders gives us, in his inventive and beloved voice, this best-selling collection of stories set against a warped, hilarious, and terrifyingly recognizable American landscape.
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Greatest living short story author reads own work.
- By Spam on 08-25-19
By: George Saunders
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The Days of Abandonment
- By: Elena Ferrante
- Narrated by: Hillary Huber
- Length: 7 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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An IndiBound best seller, The Days of Abandonment shocked and captivated its Italian public when first published. It is the gripping story of a woman's descent into devastating emptiness after being abandoned by her husband, with two young children to care for. When she finds herself literally trapped within the four walls of their high-rise apartment, she is forced to confront her ghosts, the potential loss of her own identity, and the possibility that life may never return to normal.
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D.I.V.O.R.C.E.
- By Margaret M. Cranston on 01-18-16
By: Elena Ferrante
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Random Family
- Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bronx
- By: Adrian Nicole LeBlanc
- Narrated by: Roxana Ortega
- Length: 20 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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In her extraordinary best seller, Adrian Nicole LeBlanc immerses listeners in the intricacies of the ghetto, revealing the true sagas lurking behind the headlines of gangsta glamour, gold-drenched drug dealers, and street-corner society. Focusing on two romances - Jessica's dizzying infatuation with a hugely successful young heroin dealer, Boy George; and Coco's first love with Jessica's little brother, Cesar - Random Family is the story of young people trying to outrun their destinies.
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Speechless
- By Amazon Customer on 09-02-19
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The Return
- Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between
- By: Hisham Matar
- Narrated by: Hisham Matar
- Length: 8 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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When Hisham Matar was a 19-year-old university student in England, his father was kidnapped. One of the Qaddafi regime's most prominent opponents in exile, he was held in a secret prison in Libya. Hisham would never see him again. But he never gave up hope that his father might still be alive. "Hope," as he writes, "is cunning and persistent." Twenty-two years later, after the fall of Qaddafi, the prison cells were empty, and there was no sign of Jaballa Matar. Hisham returned with his mother and wife to the homeland he never thought he'd go back to again.
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Touching memoir. Consider hard copy
- By Joschka Philipps on 02-22-18
By: Hisham Matar
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All Aunt Hagar's Children
- Selected Stories
- By: Edward P. Jones
- Narrated by: James Peter Francis
- Length: 14 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Returning to the city that inspired his first prize-winning book, Lost in the City, Jones has filled this new collection with people who call Washington, D.C., home. Yet it is not the city's power brokers that most concern him but rather its ordinary citizens.
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I JUST DON'T KNOW ABOUT THIS!
- By Mimi Routh on 07-05-15
By: Edward P. Jones
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Train Dreams
- A Novella
- By: Denis Johnson
- Narrated by: Will Patton
- Length: 2 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Suffused with the history and landscapes of the American West—its otherworldly flora and fauna, its rugged loggers and bridge builders—this extraordinary novella poignantly captures the disappearance of a distinctly American way of life. It tells the story of Robert Grainer, a day laborer in the American West at the start of the twentieth century—an ordinary man in extraordinary times. Buffeted by the loss of his family, Grainer struggles to make sense of this strange new world.
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2011 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction finalist
- By Louis on 06-20-12
By: Denis Johnson
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Runaway
- Stories
- By: Alice Munro
- Narrated by: Kymberly Dakin
- Length: 10 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Three stories concern the same woman - in the first, she escapes from teaching at a girls' school into a wild love affair; in the second, she returns with her child to the home of her parents, whose marriage she finally begins to examine; and in the last, her vanished child turns up caught in the grip of a religious cult. In these and other stories Alice Munro's understanding of the people about whom she writes makes their lives as real as our own.
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Poor Audio Quality
- By David on 04-02-10
By: Alice Munro
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Tree of Smoke
- A Novel
- By: Denis Johnson
- Narrated by: Will Patton
- Length: 23 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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This is the story of Skip Sands—spy-in-training, engaged in Psychological Operations against the Vietcong—and the disasters that befall him thanks to his famous uncle, a war hero known in intelligence circles simply as the Colonel. This is also the story of the Houston brothers, Bill and James, young men who drift out of the Arizona desert into a war in which the line between disinformation and delusion has blurred away. In its vision of human folly, and its gritty, sympathetic portraits of men and women desperate for an end to their loneliness.
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tree of smoke
- By ed spilka on 12-13-07
By: Denis Johnson
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Tenth of December
- Stories
- By: George Saunders
- Narrated by: George Saunders
- Length: 5 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Writing brilliantly and profoundly about class, sex, love, loss, work, despair, and war, Saunders cuts to the core of the contemporary experience. These stories take on the big questions and explore the fault lines of our own morality, delving into the questions of what makes us good and what makes us human.
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Be prepared for something different...but good!
- By Mr. D on 02-21-14
By: George Saunders
What listeners say about A Manual for Cleaning Women
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- P. Ryan
- 08-09-16
Hard to get through
What did you like best about A Manual for Cleaning Women? What did you like least?
I think this would have been much more enjoyable reading instead of listening. The stories jump around too much and it's hard to tell if some of the short stories are connected. I like the way it was written, but again it would have been much more suiting to read it through, because I believe it takes patience, undivided attention and dedication to enjoy it as an audio book. It's more of a heady book.
What do you think your next listen will be?
Something a little more spicy, lively and inspiring.
Would you be willing to try another one of the narrators’s performances?
No, I found the main women a little monotonous. Her performance fell flat and didn't give good opportunity for funny or dramatic material.
Did A Manual for Cleaning Women inspire you to do anything?
Eh...not especially inspiring. Some really nice keepsake sayings and thoughts here and there, but not exceptionally provocative.
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6 people found this helpful
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- Saleh
- 04-10-17
Reads Like Nonfiction
Really wonderful, gritty, personal fiction that reads like nonfiction. I highly recommend this for MFA Creative Writing programs where this type of short story collection is highly emulatable.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Clay Cassells
- 12-15-23
Lucia Berlin is so underappreciated
This is the best collection of short stories by an author you've likely never heard of.
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- MONIE
- 07-30-17
gloriously written
just marvelous I am in awe of her honesty and ability to create and maintain a mood she is a masterful storyteller!
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2 people found this helpful
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- Kristen Boelcke-Stennes
- 07-23-16
Evocative, Vibrant , leaves you with melancholy
This was a detailed rendering of sanguine regret, beauty and pain. Sometimes.a little too real. Gives these women the respect of.honest consideration.
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- Sazafrass
- 03-02-16
Exquisite writing, lopsided performances
One of the narrators, whoever the woman is who reads "Grief" and others, has a voice not unlike a robot reading "talk to text." Her inflections are so alien and odd, I can barely stand to listen to her. If I speed it up to 1.25 it is slightly more bearable, but no less bizarre. The woman who reads "A manual for cleaning women" and others, does a rich, textured, feeling and gravelly performance. I find the disparity in these two voices jarring and ultimately I am just going to buy the book so that I can read it to myself. That being said, Berlin's writing is exquisite- she rights of harsh, beautiful, rough, dirty, gorgeous, sad, depressing, surreal situations and people- my heart feels like it is being torn open from beauty and grief listening to this work. I am so grateful that her work has come to me, and so sad I didn't find it sooner, that most of us didn't find it until after she was dead. Audible, seriously, consider re-recording this volume of stories, nixing the performances of the robot lady, who generally reads anything written in the third person.
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20 people found this helpful
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- Diane R.
- 03-31-16
The lives, struggles and small, precious victories of women you'll probably never know
These short vignettes of the daily routine, crises, and terrible dilemmas facing working women and their families are narrated beautifully. I listen exclusively to short stories an hour or so before bed, and this collection is my mainstay. I have never lived these lives, which are pulled mostly from the lower echelon of American society. I promise you will see our country differently through this author's skillful narrative and characters whom you feel you are living with in just the first few words.
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9 people found this helpful
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- Colorado Book Lover
- 01-23-20
One of the best short story collections ever
What an enjoyable read. The straightforward but richly descriptive language, the narrative frankness, the truth blending with the imagined, the overwhelming sense of time and place. I feel as though I want to buy multiple copies of this book and give it to friends as gifts. It should be read and its author should be celebrated.
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- Victoria
- 05-12-20
All time favorite
Berlin’s stories are like the Mexico that she loved so much: colorful, vivid, full of wonderful images and smells. Some stories make you laugh, some make you cry, some cut you like a knife, some do all of the above.
I have this book for a few years and I keep listen to it again and again. Wonderful narrators too.
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- Stephanie
- 07-04-16
A whole book of gritty true-life stories turned out to be a little too much
I stopped listening after one last story about some poor dogs and a porcupine and then a sledgehammer. The very long and glowing forward also grew tiring. I don't like to write negative reviews, and tbh the narrators did a pretty good job mostly, but I guess I can only take so much life-story telling from this point of view. I see enough of society's underbelly where I work, I don't need it on my down time, too.
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12 people found this helpful