A manual for cleaning women : selected stories / Lucia Berlin ; edited and with an introduction by Stephen Emerson ; foreword by Lydia Davis.

Angel's laundromat -- Dr. H. A. Moynihan -- Stars and saints -- A manual for cleaning women -- My jockey -- El Tim -- Point of view -- Her first detox -- Phantom pain -- Tiger bites -- Emergency room notebook, 1977 -- Temps perdu -- Carpe diem -- Toda luna, todo anäo -- Good and bad -- Melina -- Friends -- Unmanageable -- Electric car, El Paso -- Sex appeal -- Teenage punk -- Step -- Strays -- Grief -- Bluebonnets -- La vie en rose -- Macadam -- Dear Conchi -- Fool to cry -- Mourning -- Panteoân de Dolores -- So long -- A love affair -- Let me see you smile -- Mama -- Carmen -- Silence -- Mijito -- 502 -- Here it is Saturday -- B.F. and me -- Wait a minute -- Homing.

A Manual for Cleaning Women compiles the work of short-story writer Lucia Berlin. With her trademark blend of humor and melancholy, Berlin crafts miracles from the everyday - uncovering moments of grace in the cafeterias and Laundromats of the American Southwest, in the homes of the Northern California upper classes, and from the perspective of a cleaning woman alone in a hotel dining room in Mexico City. The women of Berlin's stories are lost, but they are also strong, clever, and extraordinarily real. They are hitchhikers, hard workers, bad Christians. With the wit of Lorrie Moore and the grit of Raymond Carver, they navigate a world of jockeys, doctors, and switchboard operators. They laugh, they mourn, they drink.

English.