Some really nice keepsake sayings and thoughts here and there, but not exceptionally provocative. Her performance fell flat and didn't give good opportunity for funny or dramatic material.ĭid A Manual for Cleaning Women inspire you to do anything?Įh.not especially inspiring. No, I found the main women a little monotonous. Would you be willing to try another one of the narrators’s performances? Something a little more spicy, lively and inspiring. What do you think your next listen will be? I like the way it was written, but again it would have been much more suiting to read it through, because I believe it takes patience, undivided attention and dedication to enjoy it as an audio book. The stories jump around too much and it's hard to tell if some of the short stories are connected.

I think this would have been much more enjoyable reading instead of listening. What did you like best about A Manual for Cleaning Women? What did you like least? Audible, seriously, consider re-recording this volume of stories, nixing the performances of the robot lady, who generally reads anything written in the third person. I am so grateful that her work has come to me, and so sad I didn't find it sooner, that most of us didn't find it until after she was dead.

That being said, Berlin's writing is exquisite- she rights of harsh, beautiful, rough, dirty, gorgeous, sad, depressing, surreal situations and people- my heart feels like it is being torn open from beauty and grief listening to this work. In the foreword, Berlin’s first son Mark writes, Ma wrote true stories not necessarily autobiographical, but close enough for horseshoes. I find the disparity in these two voices jarring and ultimately I am just going to buy the book so that I can read it to myself. Evening in Paradise, a selected collection of work throughout Berlin’s career, follows women entrapped or abandoned by monstrous men and confronts the realities of the families left behind. The woman who reads 'A manual for cleaning women' and others, does a rich, textured, feeling and gravelly performance. If I speed it up to 1.25 it is slightly more bearable, but no less bizarre. One of the narrators, whoever the woman is who reads 'Grief' and others, has a voice not unlike a robot reading 'talk to text.' Her inflections are so alien and odd, I can barely stand to listen to her.

Evening in paradise by lucia berlin