I exaggerate a lot and I get fiction and reality mixed up, but I don’t actually ever lie. ― Lucia Berlin,
Lucia Brown Berlin (November 12, 1936 – November 12, 2004)[1] was an American short story writer.[2] She had a small, devoted following, but did not reach a mass audience during her lifetime.
She rose to sudden literary fame eleven years after her death, in August 2015, with Farrar, Straus and Giroux’s publication of a volume of selected stories, A Manual for Cleaning Women, edited by Stephen Emerson. It hit The New York Times bestseller list in its second week,[3] and within a few weeks, had outsold all her previous books combined.[4]
The collection was ineligible for most of the year-end awards (either because she was deceased, or it was recollected material), but was named to a large number of year-end lists, including the New York Times Book Review‘s “10 Best Books of 2015.”[5]
“The only reason I have lived so long is that I let go of my past. Shut the door on grief on regret on remorse. If I let them in, just one self-indulgent crack, whap, the door will fling open gales of pain ripping through my heart blinding my eyes with shame breaking cups and bottles knocking down jars shattering windows stumbling bloody on spilled sugar and broken glass terrified gagging until with a final shudder and sob I shut the heavy door. Pick up the pieces one more time.”
― Lucia Berlin, A Manual for Cleaning Women: Selected Stories
Lucia Berlin was not my girlfriend.
But she could’ve been.