Last month, they read A Manual for Cleaning Women by the late Lucia Berlin, so I (still on the mailing list in spite of my several years of absence) ordered a copy.
I'm not far in, but I love it so much I can't seem to pull myself away to shop for rugs and birdseeds.
Books are treasures--we all know that. But some are way harder to put down than others, funnier, fuller of surprise and texture. The characters sort of move off the page and into your heart, unforgettable. The voice of the teller feels like your own, or someone you know really well from back home, wherever that it.
Among other jobs, this writer worked as a cleaning woman to support her four sons--thus, the title of the book.
Lucia Berlin--I'm already sorry she's not alive to write more!--is the kind of funny people can be when they are just talking to their people, letting you listen in. In places, I'm reminded of the mind of Flannery O'Connor. These stories are fiction, but close to autobiographical we're told in the introduction.
We don't read just to discover "what happens" in the plot. We read--I do--for the delicious turns of phrases and unexpected humor, dark or light, that pops off the pages. Like these:
B.F. was gasping and coughing after he climbed the three steps. He was an enormous man, tall, very fat and very old. Even when he was still outside catching his breath, I could smell him. Tobacco and dirty wool. rank alcoholic sweat. He had bloodshot baby-blue eyes that smiled. I liked him right away.
or:
People in cars around us were eating sloppy things. Watermelons, pomegranates, bruised bananas. Bottles of beer spurted on ceilings, suds cascaded on the sides of cars...I'm hungry, I whined. Mrs. Snowden had foreseen that. Her gloved hands paced me fig newtons wrapped in talcum Kleenex. The cookie expanded in my mouth like Japanese flowers.
or:
"Mama, you saw ugliness and evil everywhere, in every one, in every place. Were you crazy or a seer?"
I'm not far in, but I love it so much I can't seem to pull myself away to shop for rugs and birdseeds.
Books are treasures--we all know that. But some are way harder to put down than others, funnier, fuller of surprise and texture. The characters sort of move off the page and into your heart, unforgettable. The voice of the teller feels like your own, or someone you know really well from back home, wherever that it.
Among other jobs, this writer worked as a cleaning woman to support her four sons--thus, the title of the book.
Lucia Berlin--I'm already sorry she's not alive to write more!--is the kind of funny people can be when they are just talking to their people, letting you listen in. In places, I'm reminded of the mind of Flannery O'Connor. These stories are fiction, but close to autobiographical we're told in the introduction.
We don't read just to discover "what happens" in the plot. We read--I do--for the delicious turns of phrases and unexpected humor, dark or light, that pops off the pages. Like these:
B.F. was gasping and coughing after he climbed the three steps. He was an enormous man, tall, very fat and very old. Even when he was still outside catching his breath, I could smell him. Tobacco and dirty wool. rank alcoholic sweat. He had bloodshot baby-blue eyes that smiled. I liked him right away.
or:
People in cars around us were eating sloppy things. Watermelons, pomegranates, bruised bananas. Bottles of beer spurted on ceilings, suds cascaded on the sides of cars...I'm hungry, I whined. Mrs. Snowden had foreseen that. Her gloved hands paced me fig newtons wrapped in talcum Kleenex. The cookie expanded in my mouth like Japanese flowers.
or:
"Mama, you saw ugliness and evil everywhere, in every one, in every place. Were you crazy or a seer?"
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