A Manual for Cleaning Women
16 hrs. 5 min.
Language
Russian
Author
Lucia Berlin
Author
Lucia Berlin
Narrator
Veronika Raytsiz
Narrator
Veronika Raytsiz
Description
The collection “The Housekeeper’s Manual” brings together the best stories by Lucia Berlin, who became the literary sensation of the year, and the book itself received major awards, becoming an absolute bestseller according to The New York Times and the best book of the year, as chosen by The Guardian, Buzzfeed, and Harper’s Bazaar. Berlin’s stories are as varied as life itself. They are simple, sincere, and written in a clear language—sometimes funny, sometimes tragic. They will find the key to every reader’s heart, and the voices of her characters sound truly alive and varied. “Today I stole a jar of sesame ‘The Spice Island,’” Lucia Berlin says in the story “The Housekeeper’s Manual,” the piece that gave the entire collection its title. Published in 2015, the book brought Berlin worldwide—and, sadly, posthumous—fame.
The main character works as a maid in several houses at once: for the addled Mrs. Jessel, who forgets everything; for her old friends Linda and Bob, where she carefully wipes the little mirror for cocaine each time; for the Blooms—a family of psychiatrist doctors; and for the fastidious Mrs. Burke. Beneath the ease and lightness of the stories, real despair comes to the surface: riding endless buses from one house to another, the heroine turns in her thoughts to Tera, her former husband, who suffered from alcohol dependency and died very recently, leaving her alone with four children.
This collection—continuing its triumphal procession around the world—features many different stories: about nurses and teachers, bitter drunks and modest nuns, beatniks and cancer patients.
The main character works as a maid in several houses at once: for the addled Mrs. Jessel, who forgets everything; for her old friends Linda and Bob, where she carefully wipes the little mirror for cocaine each time; for the Blooms—a family of psychiatrist doctors; and for the fastidious Mrs. Burke. Beneath the ease and lightness of the stories, real despair comes to the surface: riding endless buses from one house to another, the heroine turns in her thoughts to Tera, her former husband, who suffered from alcohol dependency and died very recently, leaving her alone with four children.
This collection—continuing its triumphal procession around the world—features many different stories: about nurses and teachers, bitter drunks and modest nuns, beatniks and cancer patients.
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