A Manual for Cleaning Women: Selected Stories

This is now my most-highlighted book of fiction. Usually I can pick a definite favourite out of a book of short stories, plus several runners-up. Here I ended up with this:

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Berlin's stories are largely autobiographical, though fictionalised to some degree (or exaggerated, as she herself admits), and there are several third-person stories in this collection that seem to be fully fictional. She's so much stronger in the former though; her own first-person voice creates a character who's a keen observer, kind in her judgement of others, often nostalgic, and always just so recognisably cool. Cooler than any of her contemporaries, which makes it so hard to grasp why it took so long for her to find her audience.

Another distinctive feature of Berlin is her lack of elitism: for most of her life she worked lower-middle-class and working-class jobs, and her strongest stories are set in emergency rooms, clinics and laundromats. It's a good reminder of the perspective that is lost to literature now that almost all published writers teach MFA degree courses.