Here's Your Hat What's Your Hurry

by Elizabeth McCracken

An alternate cover edition for this ASIN can be found here.

The singular, enchanting debut story collection from Elizabeth McCracken, now back in print as part of Ecco’s “Art of the Story” series, and with a new introduction from the author

Called “astonishingly assured” by The Guardian, the nine stories that make up Elizabeth McCracken’s debut story collection deal with oddball characters doing their very best to forge connections with those around them.

In “It’s Bad Luck to Die” a woman marries an older tattoo artist and finds comfort in agreeing to act as a canvas for his most elaborate work. “Some Have Entertained Angels, Unaware” follows a young girl as she comes face to face with a cast of eccentrics her recently-widowed father has invited to live in their expansive but dilapidated home. And in the title story, a young man and his wife are perplexed when an outspoken old woman shows up on their doorstep for a visit, claiming to be a distant aunt, even though she can’t be traced on a family tree.

At once captivating and offbeat, Here’s Your Hat What’s Your Hurry is a dazzling showcase of the early years of Elizabeth McCracken’s prodigious talent.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Literary Fiction, Humor, Adult Fiction, Audiobook, Book Club

216 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 11, 1993

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.

Elizabeth McCracken (born 1966) is an American author. She is married to the novelist Edward Carey, with whom she has two children - August George Carey Harvey and Matilda Libby Mary Harvey. An earlier child died before birth, an experience which formed the basis for McCracken's memoir, An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination.

McCracken, a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, was born in Boston, Massachusetts, graduated from Newton North High School in Newton, Massachusetts, and holds a degree in library science from Simmons College, a women's college in Boston. McCracken currently lives in Saratoga Springs, New York, where she is an artist-in-residence at Skidmore College. She is the sister of PC World magazine editor-in-chief Harry McCracken.

Reviews

[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'd read Elizabeth McCracken's collection of short stories, Here's Your Hat What's Your Hurry, a few years before, but by the time I picked it up this week while looking for something attention-deficit friendly, I couldn't have told you anything about any of the stories in the collection. I think the best way I can describe these stories, then, is that I would get a page or two into some of them and think how much they reminded me of some really good story I'd read sometime in the past. Of course, the story was reminding me of itself, and I'd realize that after another page or two.

There are nine stories in total, and some of them are somewhat throwaway, but there are a few of them that really make the book worth reading. I think my favorite was "Mercedes Kane," about a mother who wishes she were a genius, a grown-up child prodigy trying desperately to be normal, and a daughter who can't decide which is better. The title story deals with an aging woman who invents family connections in order to find places to stay; another presents a tall woman who only learns to be comfortable in her own skin after marrying a tattoo artist and becoming his canvas; the one I found I'd remembered most strongly was about a girl whose family moved across the country to a poor neighborhood in Massachusetts, where she makes friends with a "bad girl" she can neither understand nor save. The stories are unified by consistently dealing with at least one character who is somehow unusual, unconventional, or living outside of society's expectations, and McCracken attempts to portray the humanity and dignity of those characters without stripping them of their quirks or differences. Sometimes she gets too heavy-handed in these attempts, and sometimes it feels like she's trying too hard to come up with off-the-wall characters, but the writing is solid, and the stories that are "on" have a sort of haunting quality to them - the kind of quality that lets you forget the story but not the feeling of it, so when you come back to it years later, it's eerily familiar while still feeling new.

It's not an amazing book, but it's a good read, and definitely filled the bill for what I wanted this weekend - a book I could read a few pages at a time without having to pour too much attention into. I'll probably come back to it again in a year or two, after I've had enough time to forget all the separate plots again.

[Ronald Keeler · Rating 5 out of 5]

Here's Your Hat What's Your Hurry by Elizabeth. McCracken is a brilliant novel or collection of short stories; feel free to choose your label. It is an Amazon five-star plus read, and I highly recommend it to readers who might be in a reading slump. Elizabeth McCracken defines creativity by examples so diverse it is difficult to believe they were all created by the same author. There is a parenthetical note McCracken makes to the story. It looks like this. (Art of the Story). I didn’t find a note or reference to this note anywhere in the stories, but a reader should get a sense of what the author meant by reading the Introduction. Do not skip the Introduction. It is brilliant all by itself, but in that the author describes personal experiences in provoking “the muse,” it is not fiction and should stand separate from the collection.

I like to highlight sentences and phrases that impress me, but with this collection, I would have to highlight more than half the texts. In other words, a review is almost impossible without revealing a lot of spoilers. I will attempt a brief comment on each story followed by a quoted sentence or two that I thought especially good, entertaining, weird, or unique in the context of the story but is not a spoiler.

It’s Bad Luck to Die***** “Maybe you wonder how a Jewish girl from Des Moines got Jesus Christ tattooed on her three times: ascending on one thigh, crucified on the other, and conducting a miniature apocalypse beneath the right shoulder.” (p. 5). How do you walk away from a first line like that? If you did, still on page five we find this “I met Tiny the summer I graduated high school, 1965, when I was eighteen and he was forty-nine.” I am going to stick around and see where this is going. No more quotes but a comment. This story has one of the best last paragraphs which ends with one of the best last sentences that I have read in the past several years. Will I copy the paragraph and sentence here? Nope. Read this excellent first story to appreciate the build-up to great endings (there is more than one).

Some Have Entertained Angels, Unaware***** This is a complex story with many moving parts, all the parts are characters. I will start with the conclusion of the story; this tale has a perfect last paragraph. It is the only possible end to this story. Of all the many, many, observations I highlighted, here is my pick from this story. “Suzanne was least cheerful. She got along well with Dad, was formal and polite to Bobby, barely tolerated Mike, ignored Gert, and hated Kenneth Graves with an intensity that I only realized years later comes of having slept with a person.” (p.35). The “intensity” comment struck me because it seems to condemn all marriages, inevitably. The character descriptions in this story will lead many readers to agree with the story’s perfect conclusion.

Here’s Your Hat What’s Your Hurry*****Everyone loves the surprise that comes with the arrival of a long-unseen relative. Right? And Aunt Helen Beck loved to surprise her relatives. A remark attributed to Winston Churchill (Guests and fish begin to smell after three days) might have hurt Aunt Helen Beck’s feelings. Three days were just the beginning of Helen’s visits to any of her relatives. She was not a freeloader; she contributed much during her stay, much of it in the form of stories. My favorite lines: “Aunt Helen Beck had many intentions about her death. She was about being dead the way some people are about being British—she wasn’t, and it seemed she never would be, but it was clearly something she aspired to, since all the people she respected were.” (p.58).

The Bar of Our Recent Unhappiness ***** Jake describes a bit of his life with wife Barbara to his good friend, George. When not doing so he muses alone about his life with Barbara. They are in a perfect symbiotic marriage. Jake likes feeling needed by Barbara. He also knows that he needs her. His life before meeting her gives me a quote I liked. “I am a man of many small mistakes. I am not competent. This is not harsh self-judgment; it is a fact. I have burned food all my life; I wear spotted clothing without noticing; I botch household jobs. I can’t fill out a check right the first time. I am not an expert at day-to-day living. This can’t be turned into anything good—you can’t say I’m being cautious or that I’m thinking deep thoughts—there’s no excuse for why I do things this way. I never learn.” (p. 94). But Barbara is sick now. Will Jake survive? What will be the driving force necessary to keep him alive?

Mercedes Kane ***** Ruthie lived with her mom, Ellen, and heard many stories about Mercedes Kane. Mom knew Mercedes as a whiz kid who had achieved fame by demonstrating her genius on quiz shows. Who would have thought that mom would one day meet Mercedes casually in a shop and invite her home? Mercedes would live an extended stay with mom and Ruthie as Ellen tried to encourage Mercedes to tell stories and reveal the secret of her genius. Ellen was in love with genius and the idea of being a genius which led me to highlight this passage: “You can’t be a genius, she (Ellen) told me (Ruthie) once, if you forget what it is you’re geniusing, and if you’re stupid, you might as well be absentminded.” (p. 105). Her recollections of Mercedes Kane may have been faulty.

What We Know About the Lost Aztec Children ***** Steven was not pleased when his father gave him the task of watching out for Uncle Plazo, an uncle who had come to visit his mother, a former circus performer who had headlined as the Armless Wonder for obvious reasons. Plazo was old going on ancient and might have been approaching dementia, hence the need for a watcher. But why Steven? At least Plazo was good for a lot of stories which were amusing except when acted out in public. Telling Steven about a former fellow circus performer, Plazo noted: “The man from Mars,” he said to me outside, “was from Kentucky. I always liked him.” (p. 133).

June ***** Phoebe met a new friend soon after moving into a new neighborhood. But it soon became apparent that the two were from different backgrounds and would likely have different adult outcomes. Describing her new friend, Phoebe observed: “She had other things I lacked: cowlicks, cavities, Barbie dolls, a number of relatives who lived with her, a record player and some glossy 45s, and her period. I, she explained to me, had these advantages: long hair, a resident father, my own room. June told me I was lucky in a voice that made me sure I was not.” (p. 149). I found a twist at the end of the story very sad.

Secretary of State ***** Should loyalty to one’s birth family ever supersede loyalty to a family one creates through marriage? That is a central question in this story. Sophie, a child, had to witness the battle for the control of her father’s soul between the Barron family and her father. Her mother, a Barron, was in the enemy camp. In later life, Sophie will reflect on the pressures that made up such a family. Sophie recalled: “Every older Barron had a younger Barron to take care of. Ida, a fretter even as a child, would once a month get up in the middle of the night and dress my mother before leading her out to the lawn. It wasn’t that she’d smelled smoke, exactly: it was just that she’d remembered a fire. (p. 168)

The Goings-On of the World ***** “One morning in the last week of May I got up, got dressed, and killed my wife. I remember an argument the night before about oranges, and Rosie threatening to leave.” (p. 197). These are the second and third sentences beginning this story. Joseph Green had remorse for much of his life, both in and out of prison, for what he had done. When contemplating suicide, he thought: “I imagined undoing my body as if it were a machine, unscrewing first my feet, then calves, opening my torso like a cabinet and clattering around in there, untightening kidneys.” (p. 198).

The novel is such a good collection of stories; words fail me in trying to describe them. Luckily for readers of this collection, words did not fail the author.

[Slurry222 · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. A solid short story collection. There were several stellar stories whose prose and wit crackled off the page, a few good stories and a few that seemed too long and didn't hold my interest.

Thank you to the publisher for providing me with an ARC in exchange for a fair review.

[Steven · Rating 4 out of 5]

tl;dr in McCracken's debut collection is a symphonic suite of change, of leaving, that occasionally highlights its characters' understanding of the world, but more often their misunderstanding of it

All the time I’d been in Boston, I felt dumb, because there were so many things I didn’t know. Before, I was cocky and assumed I’d always owned my knowledge: I remembered the lessons but not the teacher. Suddenly, I realized, some things you must be taught. (136, "June")

"Here's your hat, what's your hurry?" is one of those midwestern/southern hospitality idioms that have never been thrown at my direction; apparently it's a sarcastic way of trying to get someone, who has likely overstayed their welcome, to finally leave. (In California we haven't the language, the understood phrases, to get people to do such things; we'd rather just sit in silence and say nothing out of being too nice) Here's Your Hat What's Your Hurry, the debut collection from Elizabeth McCracken, is, in a sense, a book about leaving, a book about hospitality. The comings-and-goings that constitute the progression of life play major roles in each of its characters' tales, resulting in a consistently entertaining, often somber, and consistently surprising set of stories.

McCracken unspools character detail in parallel with narrative detail with such ease and intention, resulting in an effortless flow. A narrator will reveal a key detail about a different character at the same time a "stranger rolls into town" ("What We Know About The Lost Aztec Children"), the passage of time will be decorated with character detail ("Secretary of State"), or secondhand details about another character will be contradicted ("Mercedes Kane"). There are so many impressive examples of how McCracken constructs and situates her stories, and these were all things that I noticed -- not one example calls attention to itself.

Another benefit of this well-crafted story scaffolding is that it leaves room for surprises along the way. Most of these stories aren't about what they appear to be at first: a man meets another man at a bar; a narrator recalls an aunt; a narrator asks if we're wondering how she, a Jewish woman, has three tattoos of Jesus on her body (this isn't fully explained in the story). Never does it feel like a fake-out, but rather a reinforcement of one of the collection's key themes: how we are shaped by the things we don't know.

“People can forget about me,” she said. “If we sit down and talk, people can forget there’s anything different about me at all. It’s what they want to do. I can see it every time I meet somebody. They think: God, let me forget about what’s wrong with this woman.”
“There’s nothing wrong with you,” I said.
My mother shook her head. “They want to forget about me, and I want them to forget.” Her feet were on my calves. “But is that fair?” she said. “Why should I want them to?”
“Because it doesn’t make any difference,” I said.
“Oh yes,” she said. “It does.” (146, "What We Know About The Lost Aztec Children")

In her craft book on writing, McCracken considers several ways that an author might describe a character (or rather, the things that may surround a character to inform their description): "Soul, anatomy, body, clothing, furniture, room, building, street, neighborhood, municipality, state, country, continent, hemisphere, planet, galaxy" (No. 144). But one thing that marks a character in McCracken's debut is a mention of things that they don't know: knowledge beyond their grasp, things they never got to learn themselves, or pieces of knowledge they just flat out refuse to acknowledge. Multiple times, narrators turn a blind eye to common abstractions of the everyday: electricity, spark plugs, plumbing. Parents of narrators mention things that their children could never do: swim, play piano, rock climb. And often, key information about characters is withheld from us, the reader, and only sometimes revealed to us in time. One story's title, "What We Know About The Lost Aztec Children", has the implication of everything we don't know (and never do learn).

How do the characters of Here's Your Hat come out the other side of navigating the choppy waters of unknowability? To me, lack of understanding begets a journey to clarity or closure, and much of Here's Your Hat is about how intrinsically human it is to seek it. As is expected of a contemporary short story, very few of these characters actually get to have any sense of clarity or closure, but it is a compelling journey nonetheless. This being a debut collection, not all of these have conclusions that land, and at least one of these has a rushed conclusion (according to the 2018 introduction from the author herself), but I enjoyed all of these stories of imperfect humans navigating the chaos of life, grief, and death.

Please consider these words: do you remember. They mean everything.
Do you remember is the game sweethearts and friends play, and strangers from the same college who meet at the bus stop. Married people lead a life of it, I guess: do you remember our meeting, our courting, our parting. There is something so personal and lovely and casual in that line. (211, "The Goings-on of the World")

[Ericka Clou · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of those rare short story collections where all the stories are good. There are nine stories and my favorites are the first one, It's Bad Luck to Die, about a man who tattoos his wife a great deal, and Some Have Entertained Angels Unaware, which is both moving and hilarious. I also really liked June, Secretary of State, and the title story.

[tee · Rating 5 out of 5]

I know I'm reading a really good book when I am coming to completion and feel sad. A lot of books that I read, even if I am enjoying them I get excited to finish because then I get to start a new book. But with this one, I was like, aw please just one more story?

The main reason I was looking to finishing this one was so that I could come on here and write "This was a crackin' good read" and then say "See what I did there? Huh?!" But it doesn't have as much impact in the second paragraph of the review, and also - I googled "crackin' good read" and got distracted by google's suggestions which, amongst others were, "crackin good bakery", "crackin good food manchester", "crackin good egg" and "cracking knuckles good for you". Then I got that thing where a word starts looking really weird. Cracking. Now I can't say that this was a cracking good read with conviction because of how odd the word suddenly looks. Cracking.

What? The point of a review is to actually review the book? No, really? This book done good. It told great stories. It held my attention span which is an impressive feat. McCracken (go on, say it out loud, it's so satisfying) even manages to tell stories about weird things (a lady with no arms who has a little person as a house guest) - and they're believable. The subject matter, the bones underneath the story was emotive and thought-provoking; a man who visits his wife who sustained head injuries in a car incident and the feeling of loss even though she is still technically alive, a lonely woman who works who way into various family units, an eccentric family and their odd rituals.

The first story, about a tattooist and his partner was a great start to the book. I was dubious, as my partner is a tattooist and I myself have worked in the industry, so I was worried that it wouldn't ring true. But it did, and it was really touching. My partner even read it and enjoyed it, prompting him to declare that he could possibly enjoy reading short stories - a grand statement considering the dude doesn't read (and started our relationship by recommending me The DaVinci Code). Another favourite in this collection was about a girl, Phoebe, and her new friend June. I would have loved to have seen this fleshed out into a novel, the characters were fascinating and I think it was some of McCracken's best writing ("Everything was heavier near Boston: air, accents, women.")

I found them all to be wonderfully self-contained, interesting stories. A 4.5 but I'll give it a 5 because I'm not pre-menstrual and I'm feeling jovial. A crackin' good read, if I must say so. And I must.

[Gila Gila · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection spins a myriad of American female experience, from that of a young girl to an elderly woman, both on the outer fringes of society; it’s an unusually compelling, moving, and memorable collection of short stories; I loved it.

The title story is about elderly Aunt Helen; everybody’s Aunt, nobody’s relative. A permanent houseguest, on the road until - until. For now, she’s staying with a young married couple, talking their ears off about people long gone-

“She was about being dead the way some people are about being British; she wasn’t, and it seemed she never would be, but it was clearly something she aspired to.”

I liked this tale fine, as I went along - and then, quite suddenly, I loved it.  Loved it so much that I thought, oh, this aches, this is going to be one of my favourite short stories, a thought that in the past has been summoned by Flannery O’Connor or Richard Yates. 

“She spoke of people from her past, and family.  ‘I once knew a woman with 21 children,’ she said to Chris. 
‘Good Lord!’ said Chris, ‘That doesn’t seem possible!’ 
‘It’s true’, said Aunt Helen Beck. ‘She was a collector. They weren’t all hers. She just fancied them and took them in, and when she tired of one, she threw them out and got another.’
‘She sounds like a sad case,’ said Chris. 
‘Perhaps. Despite it all, I loved my mother.’

A manipulative little bit of writing, but landing where it does, it’s powerful, moments after we realize just how desperate the supposedly stolid Aunt Helen’s situation is (she is 80 or so and has nothing, even the name she uses may be fictitious).

The aching, beautiful story is marred slightly by a last page that takes all the fine, true sadness of the previous pages and tosses it, in exchange for a fairy tale ending. I felt two things simultaneously: oh, come on, this can’t be the end, that would never happen! And - oh, please, no, this can’t be the end, please, i can’t leave them there. I need more. 

In “Some Have Entertained Angels, Unaware”, a child’s mother dies; her father begins taking in boarders, who become another kind of family, an increasingly valuable one. The tenants are not well employed, happily adjusted people stepping in to make up for the child’s loss; they arrive at the house from somewhere out there, nowhere easy or stable. This is fitting, for life is never going “back to normal” for this girl, but her darkness is increasingly infiltrated by their sudden, peculiar warmth. 

“It’s Bad Luck to Die” is a short story in memoir motif, told by a plain spoken 18 year old girl, fresh out of high school. (“My life drove my mother crazy … I broke her heart. That was my job. She let me know her heart was broken. That was hers.” ). She falls in love with, and quickly marries, a 49 year old tattoo artist. She is 6 feet tall. He is - short, very. Her height is perfection to him, so much of his beloved’s skin to cover with ink! Their age difference is the sort of material that fills Reddit threads and the like with spitting rage these days. It didn’t bother me a bit here. It’s a fable, and while I didn’t feel the same attachment as I did to some of the other pieces, the last line - easily foretold - moved me still.

I liked better “June”, a girlhood friendship with a neighbor from the wrong side of the tracks, darkness impending; and also Secretary of State, vaguely reminiscent of Anne Tyler, revolving around a large family of adult siblings (“Aunt Ida was exactly like Mom, but more so.”)

There are others, and there are more collections by Elizabeth McCracken. Until now I had only read one of her stories, which I think appeared in one of the Best American Short Stories. Still, it was such a strong piece of writing that when I came across it, listed in her collection The Souvenir Museum, I immediately thought, oh! She wrote *that* story too! And so, happily onwards.

[Dena · Rating 3 out of 5]

For many years I have been a fan of Elizabeth McCracken--who made a splash on the literary scene in the 1990's--with her novel The Giant's House which I read and loved--she was noted by Granta as an up and coming young novelist. Since then I've read two/2 other of her novels--Niagara Falls all over again--which I loved, and more recently her novel: Bowlaway--not so much. To note, I don't post/review every book I've read/on Goodreads. This short story collection of hers predates her novels and it has been on my reading list since the 1990's, and my reading the Giant's House. The edition of this short story collection that I read was a paperback by HarperCollins reprint with a preface by McCracken. Honestly now I think I made a mistake about reading the preface at all--she starts out about how the stories came about first out of her MFA program and then wreckages of failed novels and admits one of the stories she does not specify but I quote: "There is a scene in a story in my first book -- this book -- that I only years later realized was stolen from Tobias Wolff's 'Hunters in the Snow.'" While I give her the credit for looking back with a fair eye to her work/fully disclosing her thoughts about it--I found a lot of this preface a bit unsettling--not sure it's the best word to use--but the best word that I can think of right now. Perhaps reading her *preface--it colored my reading of this collection, and here my full disclosure: and also as it happened I read three different short story collections one after the other: Richard Ford and Kevin Canty--which may also have had an impact on my digesting her stories/from this collection. Generally they were well written--while I found her title story character of an elderly woman/grifter to be the best and most compelling an now I'm wondering if that was the story w/ the scene borrowed from Wolff--again b/c I read the preface and she the author herself (McCracken) put the doubt/bug in my head. *Prefaces are obviously included to be read, especially in later editions/updates by the author--sometimes honestly I skip them and read them after the creative work--although I think if I had done that here though/stuck to that procedure--I would feel just as unsettled.

[Mrsbb · Rating 3 out of 5]

Non so so se non ero nel mood adatto per leggere questo genere di storie o se semplicemente queste storie non sono il mio genere. Le ho trovate ben scritte e buffe, ma non mi sono mai sentita “coinvolta”.
Ho trovato molto bella “Segretario di Stato” e anche “il bar della nostra recente infelicità”.
Mi chiedo se troverò un autore americano che riesca a folgorarmi. Avevo sentito parlare così bene dell’autrice che speravo nel colpo di fulmine. Però era una bella scommessa, considerando che questa è la sua primissima pubblicazione.
Approfondirò di nuovo l’autrice in futuro.

[Kirsten · Rating 3 out of 5]

[1993] I liked these short stories, I thought they were good, and "Secretary of State" I thought was really nicely done. Really liked her writing and her story-telling style, smart and funny, the characters/situations were all...unexpected (trying to avoid using the word quirky). I didn't find myself emotionally connected but I liked it all at an intellectual level and can easily see how people would love these stories.

[Kathy Cowie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Elizabeth McCracken is one of my favorite writers, and this collection did not disappoint. There are characters in this story so quirky and weird (and wonderful) that I felt almost normal reading about them during this global quarantine. Proving once again the power of books to calm and provide a necessary escape.

[Wendy Greenberg · Rating 3 out of 5]

Enjoyed some stories more than others, especially the opener "It's Bad Luck to Die".

The collection is all very readable and I adore McCracken's writing style, but it did not blow me away like some of her other writing.

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am reminded that I do not love short stories :D

[Lucy Rothbardt · Rating 4 out of 5]

i LOVE short stories!!! some of them were better than others, but overall, i was very drawn to the obscurity of the narratives and the unexpected nature of the characters. this was such a fun read!

[Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

God, Elizabeth McCracken is good. Her aesthetic and her stories themselves are so firmly rooted in the past but in such an authentic way. The title story here was a standout, as was the final story, the name of which I can't remember, all of a sudden. But every story here is excellent, and there are a couple of stories which feel repetitive in their themes, but it doesn't really matter because McCracken writes what she knows very well, and it's a pleasure to read in any iteration.

[Joan Colby · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderfully quirky and highly original stories. I particularly liked the title story “Here’s Your Hat, What’s Your Hurry” where the visiting Aunt Helen Beck turns out to be nobody’s aunt. The little boy Mercury is unforgettable. Other stellar tales are “June”, a touching coming-of-age story and “Secretary of State” with the remarkable Barron family. McCracken’s stories while extraordinarily imaginative are also believable—a rare combination.

[Liz · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed these stories, though "stories" seems almost the wrong word. "Stories" implies plots, and these are more like extended character sketches. Nothing much HAPPENS, but you get a peek into a person, or a place, or a time, and you find yourself wanting to know what happened before or after. What WAS the whole story? Elizabeth McCracken is something of a new author to me (though this is far from a new book) and I've enjoyed everything I've read so far.

[Emi Yoshida · Rating 3 out of 5]

Each story had an interesting take on a unique hook, most involving librarians to some extent: tattoos, circus freaks, brain injury, child prodigy, juvenile delinquent, family dysfunction, fake relation, prison. But somehow they weren't long enough to satisfy. It felt to me like she wrote just enough to end it and then ticked off a box: done.

[Thor Balanon · Rating 5 out of 5]

A reread. I first read this when I turned thirty almost two decades ago. It’s still sharp and thoughtful and beautifully constructed and now I understand it more, the pain of the freaks, the shame of failures, the secrets one keeps.

[Max · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is such a solid collection of stories, and though there are definitely a few that particularly stand out, I enjoyed all of them. I appreciate that so many of them have an unusual element to them, oftentimes revealed subtly and with indifference—a woman who opens her body as a canvas for a tattoo artist, a former circus performer who decides to take into her family's home one of her old circus friends, a wayward older woman who works her way into distant family members' homes. But they all are grounded in reality and mundaneness and touch on universal truths, which give them a human element I felt I could connect with.

Here are some thoughts on the ones that stood out for me (will add more):

It's Bad Luck To Die
This is one of my favorites from the collection because it's humorous and also touches on a theme that I feel I can connect with pretty well—finding acceptance and love for a body that you feel uncomfortable in. Sometimes that means defining your own vision of beauty, even if it's forged from the beauty someone else recognizes in you and guides you to see.

Favorite quotes

Like all good mothers, she always knew the worst was going to happen and was disappointed and relieved when it finally did.

All she wanted was for me to become miraculously blank.

My mother was wrong. I never felt like a freak because of my height: I felt like a ghost haunting too much space... It's like when you move into a new place, and despite the lease and despite the rent you've paid, the place doesn't feel like home and you're not sure you want to stay... Well, getting a tattoo—it's like hanging drapes, or laying carpet, or driving that first nail into the fresh plaster: it's deciding you've moved in.

...I am not a museum, not yet, I'm a love letter, a love letter.

[Sandie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This anthology of nine stories is by Elizabeth McCracken, who is known for her gentle and offbeat writing. There is a story about a son whose mother was in a circus sideshow as she was born without arms and now gives a home to other performers who are homeless. Another story features a family with nine children. When the children grow up, they still socialize only with each other and push everyone else away, including spouses. My favorite story is about a couple who receive a visit from a distant aunt of the husband's. Only after she has been with them for months do they discover she isn't related to them at all.

Elizabeth McCracken is known as a writer's writer. She is close friends with Ann Patchett and is the person who reads Patchett's books before they are published. She has had three books longlisted for the National Book Awards. Her stories feature the mundane lives of people with fantasy thrown in as an everyday occurrence. I try to read everything she writes as I find her whimsy and insight into our lives memorable. This book is recommended for readers of anthologies and literary fiction.

[Xanthe · Rating 4 out of 5]

I requested this one through interlibrary loan because I ran across someone glowingly praising Elizabeth McCracken’s writing. I keep attempting to understand and value short stories and I’m still not quite there. This collection showcases McCracken’s writing, which is impressively good. Her descriptions and characterizations are so sharp, making me pause from time to time to just savor the way she made me think about the world differently for just a moment. But I still struggle with short stories in that they’re a bit like islands, isolated and meant to be complete and unconnected to a longer, larger story. And this was not the soul-crushing kind of Literature where the banality of humanity is exposed and explored, but I definitely came away from each story feeling and little sadder and a little warier. I guess I prefer longer stories that make me feel happy when I’m done reading, which maybe makes me uncultured, but whatever. In summary, lovely writing, but I continue not to appreciate short stories or Literature.

[Brenda Hyke · Rating 2 out of 5]

Meh, a few of these stories were really good; far better than a two star rating. But overall, it was just okay for me. There were a great many recurring themes, scenes, and references that showed up in several stories… which first made me double check if I was reading fiction. But by the end I was a little fatigued with the repetition… instead of being taken in by the stories (having read them consecutively) my brain started on a course of pattern recognition logging. Absent parents: check. Welcoming peculiar strangers into the home: check. Reference to a chaise lounge: check. Reference to Des Moines: check. Characters that are isolated and unable to create bonds: check. Children that are unseen by parents: check. And so on…

Don’t read it as a book. Take the stories one at a time and take a break. Put space between each story. Then maybe the author’s tendency to pull details and themes from the same set of source material will be less distracting.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

Since the 1970's the American literary short story has become drier, denser, and less interesting on the surface. Don't mistake me— a lot of very good writing has emerged from these trends. But... It often seems as if the short story writers have been secretly competing with poets to produce more and more obfuscation. Amid this, Elizabeth McCracken's stories are exciting and surprising, like finding a package on your porch when you don't remember ordering one. The stories in this collection are full of characters you want to meet, hug, maybe be related to. Or, if not that, you want to shake their hands and walk away secretly thrilled to call them friends going forward. I am adding this book, like "The Collected Stories of John Cheever," to the list of short-story books which I will revisit every 5 to 10 years.

[Jill Elizabeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are moments of absolute brilliance here, and the first story is a prime example. It was a spot - on success and a marvelous opening piece. I moved onto the next story eagerly, and it started gorgeously - but then somehow the brilliance wound up buried in layers of something indescribable that rendered them obscure and difficult and it lost me. From there I found each subsequent story to be more of the same - flashes of brilliance layered in difficulty each and every time. McCracken has a grand grasp of language and I'm cautiously optimistic despite my feelings about so many of these stories, so will definitely try another title of hers and hopefully find a better fit...

[JT · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some stories were better than others. Unconventional characters are the stars of each story, but the writer’s craft makes the stories somehow seem very normal. Particularly fond of Secretary of State and the last one in the series Of the Goings-on of the World:
“Please consider these words:
do you remember,
they mean everything
Do you remember
is the game sweethearts and friends play
And strangers from the same college who meet at the bus stop
Married people lead a life of it, I guess
Do you remember our meeting? Our courting? Our parting?
There’s something so personal and lovely, and casual in that line
It was something that no one had said to me for 50 years…”

[Margaryta · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't know if I will ever want to REREAD these stories but "Here's Your Hat What's Your Hurry" was incredibly entertaining to get through the first time. McCracken's writing is an example of the way whimsy and eccentricity can work in a short story without being over-the-top and exaggerated. It's what made every story real yet simultaneously somehow fantastical and it's McCracken's ability to make the everyday feel like a kaleidoscope of the extraordinary that made me enjoy these short stories so much.

[Christian · Rating 3 out of 5]

This isn't a collection of stories so much as a collection of character studies. There are some interesting characters in here and the dialogue is strong. None of it particularly interesting or clever, but real. There is only one clunker of a story - "June." The rest are average to good. Reading the other euphoric reviews, I'm guessing the other readers have very, very, very little going on in their lives and are absolutely thrilled at the rare find of a book of 220 pages of conversations.

[Ocean G · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent collection of fun stories. Many of them take place quite some time ago, and there are interesting themes in multiple stories, like doing homework assignments, cutting hair, and Waltham, MA.

My favorites were probably “Here’s Your Hat, What’s Your Hurry”, "Secretary of State" and "The Bar of our Recent Unhappiness". But none of them were bad. The first story, "It's bad luck to die", was probably my least favorite. And "June" was a little too heavy for me.

[Laureen Granger · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a strange and lovely mix of stories!

I actually met Elizabeth McCracken when she was a young librarian in Somerville, and gave a reading from her novel “The Giant’s House”. I wish we had become friends, because I absolutely adore her massive imagination and extraordinary ability to paint weird and vivid pictures with words. If you want to read something, unlike anything else you’ve read, pick up one of her books!