A Manual For Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin

The New York Times released a list of the 100 best books of the 21st century and while I had a very good showing when it comes to what made that list, I am slowly, almost lackadaisically, working on reading some of the things that fall into the gaps, and this is one of them. The 43-story collection often rings autobiographical—the author worked numerous jobs, suffered from alcoholism, and lived in many of the cities found in the book such as El Paso, Santa Fe, and Berkeley—and brims with perceptive observations of working class life. The characters return in several stories, and the whole collection feels linked on a number of levels. There is a whirlwind of memories, characters, and settings, all of which ride on an undercurrent of dark humor, nearly every story in the collection is captivating in its constant motion and minute detail. The collection’s title piece, in particular, centers around a mode of transportation—the bus—and concerns a cleaning woman going through the motions of her work-week as she processes the loss of her late husband. The character analysis of both those one works for and those one works with are insightful and enjoyable. I listened to the collection while on some longer road trips, and it was a good way to enjoy the collection.