When the Messenger Is Hot

I thought this was going to be Bridget Jones's Girl's Guide to Wearing Black and Living in New York, yet another book about a smart but aimless young woman who deep down just wants to find Mr. Right and does. It's so much better than that ! It's about certain kinds of deep loneliness and loss, about being just on this side of being truly odd and knowing that, about neurosis as more than a charming foible. The writing is really sharp and clever. I read my teenage daughter "Something Shiny," in which the narrator finds herself pushed out of her own real life by the actress picked to play her in the movies. We laughed and laughed!

Good fiction is all about voice. As a reader, I find a compelling voice, and I'm willing to follow it just about anywhere. The voices in Elizabeth Crane's striking and original debut story collection practically scream off the pages. This book is a pitch-perfect blend of neurosis, humor and pathos. Favorites include "The Archetype's Girlfriend," "Something Shiny," "Year-at-a-Glance," "Return From the Depot!" and "An Intervention." Anyone who thinks the short story is a dead art form would do well to pick this up, along with a copy of David Foster Wallace's Brief Interviews with Hideous Men.

This is a very interesting collection -- far deeper than I think it may first appear to many readers, simply because the extreme conversational style of the stories lends itself to so fleet a reading that it's easy to hurtle right over the nasty, scarring battle going on between despair and hope -- an underlying shadow largely revealed, I think, in words, turns of phrase, rather than whole plotlines. Doesn't the best comedy always spring from horror?For example, THE DAVES may at first seem like pure gimmick; then he calls her Jennifer and you realize that for all the quick witted comedy our heroine is trapped in a world of shallow relationships from which there is absolutely no escape -- a trap every bit a nightmarish as your favorite Twlight Zone episode. (I guess that won't make sense to those who haven't read it, sorry). Or take SOMETHING SHINY, in which your wildest dream -- a movie of your life! -- ends up proof that, as you'd always secretly feared, there's nothing to you at all ( no "there there" as they say of LA, which I think is a hidden joke in the story, since it's about the movies).In NORMAL, a description of someone else's bad behaviour takes a last-second turn to reveal that all the intellectual and moral disdain in the world doesn't stand a chance against the emotional, physical, sexual or psychic attractions we feel. We have met the enemy, and she is us yet again.Not for nothing is the seemingly positive note the very last -- and, significantly, the very shortest -- with GOOD FOR YOU! sounding a short and simple "I am not most people." Notice, though, that even that proud declaration only comes after misunderstanding, criticism and fear from the rest of the world.I look forward to watching Ms. Crane develop and I will certainly read her next book(s) with great interest, I think she has a tremendous talent. Don't miss MESSENGER -- but read slowly: it takes a volume of suffering to make a page of jokes.

I loved this book. The stories are dreamlike and funky. Woozy and fun. I particularly enjoyed the tale of her dead mother's return as a celebrity and, well, all the stories about her mother. This is a gifted writer and I highly recommend the read.

Having heard this author read one of these stories,"Return from the Depot!" about a mother's return from the dead and subsequent celebrity, I assumed this was among her strongest in this collection. Well, having ingested the entire collection in one sitting, I can say that while the story was a good representative of her sensibilities and talent, the whole of the collection exceeds the sum of the parts, each story illuminating the others while maintaining its distinct place in the cosmos of the author's worldview. Crane treads the familiar hip-sensitive female territory of Lucinda Rosenfeld and Elissa Schappel: grief and longing, laced with humor and hope over such commonplace heartbreaks as dead parents, bad boyfriends, unfortunate lifestyle choices. Yet in several stories she throws a curve reminiscent of a softer edged Aimee Bender, a fairy-dusting of magical realism, putting the pain in perspective, reminding us that with imagination wonderful things are possible, horrible things endurable, and transformation is just a dream away.