When the Messenger Is Hot

by Elizabeth Crane

"The women in When the Messenger Is Hot are fierce and kind, damaged and optimistic. They are recovering from loss or addiction or betrayal, or they are on the fringes of reality or sanity or a "conventional" life. They are jilted lovers, absent daughters, Twelve-Steppers, and smart-asses. Imagined with tenderness and unflinching honesty, they experience love and loss in a way that is both uniquely theirs and universal." From the woman who decides to live on the patio rooftop of her friend's apartment building, to the bestselling memoir writer who finds her identity overtaken by the actress cast in the movie adaptation, to the daughter convinced her dead mother is in fact simply stuck at a North Dakota bus depot, the characters herein confront and defy the onslaught of crises, emotions, and passions that seem to arise at every turn.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Novels, Humor

210 pages, Hardcover

First published January 8, 2003

About the author

Elizabeth Crane is the author of two novels We Only Know So Much (now a major motion picture) and The History of Great Things (Harper Perennial) and four collections of short stories: When the Messenger Is Hot and All This Heavenly Glory (Little, Brown) and You Must Be This Happy to Enter (Akashic Books), and Turf (Counterpoint). Her work has been adapted for the stage by Steppenwolf Theater and featured on NPR's Selected Shorts. She is a winner of the Chicago Public Library 21st Century Award.

Reviews

[Miss Susan]

okay folks LISTEN

i wanna figure out what it's like to be an adult

not like have a job, pay bills, figure out how to make a meal type adult, i'm already stumbling my way through that

but like. i wanna talk about HOUSE PROJECTS and my neighbour susan who is always adding things to her lawn, it drives me mad and how barry over in finance just got married for the third time, isn't it WILD and property taxes are so HORRIBLE and also have you tried the car dealership on wilson avenue, i got a .5% five year financing on my car, and last week i was at book club with ellen and our book was just such a powerful glimpse at the foibles of modern life, so quirky and funny, i absolutely DIED at the story about madame rochau's young paramour, it was an utter GAS

anyways i don't know how to do most of that stuff but i figure i could start with the books? i'm good with books. books are cool. so i'm gonna read this book because the summary doesn't describe the story at all but does namedrop some newspapers and i feel like that means it probably has no spaceships or magic and lots of scenes of people eating dinner and that seems like the kind of thing ellen at book club would read, you know?

[Pamela · Rating 5 out of 5]

Elizabeth Crane has that thing all writers wish for: a distinctive voice. In this volume (I'm eager to get to her three others), it's caffeinated, deliriously self-conscious, and strangely buoyant. I wouldn't necessarily want to be the young women in these tales--they are by and large confused, directionless, and not so lucky in love--but boy do I like to listen to them. Many of the stories in the collection are deceptively light and comic, but wrap up with a dark, rich note that takes the reader someplace deeper. Others (including one of my favorites, "Year-at-a-Glance," which deals with a mother's terminal illness) are heartbreakers all the way through. Apart from "Year-at-a-Glance," my biggest thumbs-up go to "The Archetype's Girlfriend," "The Super Fantastic New Zealand Triangle," "An Intervention," and the delightful, brief, savage "Good for You!" Some of these stories contain magical elements, but Crane makes one feel that the magic isn't any weirder or harder to believe in than the tricks our ordinary mental life plays on us.

[Jamie · Rating 2 out of 5]

The author has a unique voice, but sadly the stories don't. They're all told by what might as well be the same character, and what might very well be half a step away from the author herself. OK, collections like that can still be good, but this one was just all right. The stories are mildly entertaining and a few are written in a mildly unusual style, but I'm struggling to find anything better to say about these stories. The book is a very quick read, solicits little thought, and doesn't leave the reader with much, if anything to ponder. All that said, it's not *bad*. It's just nothing special.

[Seth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Son-of-a-gun. It turns out that finding a book that is written in a voice that is just like that of all of your favorite ex-girlfriends at their most clever, funny, and sophisticated is oddly enjoyable.

[Ben]

These are great stories and I expect Elizabeth Crane to emerge as a verb very soon. You know, like, did you read that story, she totally Crane'd it. All of that, and really special. Had a huge impact on me and what I wanted to do with words then.

[Maggie Downs]

Elizabeth Crane has such a beautiful mind.

[gabymck · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5!
Reading this collection of short stories was like listening to a dear friend. Many parts are vague and superficial, but many others are really meaningful deliberations on relationships, mainly with my friend’s mother and/or her significant others. I’m so glad I payed attention to this book rec.

[10thumbs · Rating 3 out of 5]

As previously mentioned, I’m not a big fan of short story collections. Where Heart Songs made me question that, the unevenness of When the Messenger confirmed it. The style of weary-oblique-over-self-realized-oddity was interesting early on but aggravating toward the end. At least Chicago featured prominently.

[Nikki Morse · Rating 2 out of 5]

I liked one or two stories at the end, enough that I almost thought about another star. But I read the rest of the book in one day just so that I could be done with it and move on.

[Yasmin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this!!!! It needs more readers. It is the perfect balance of light and touching and funny and meaningful. Loved it

[Margaret Vos · Rating 2 out of 5]

3.5/10

[Finley Caughran · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was good, I liked most of the stories and her writing is very easy to read and palpable.

[Carly · Rating 2 out of 5]

I never got into this book. It’s maybe a 2.5? I was never engaged by the stories. Ever.

[behsforensics]

Cutting is for Return from the Depot!
By Elizabeth Crane

[Aaron · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Intervention" just might be my favorite story in this collection. In Crane's story, a woman joins A.A. even though she is not an alcoholic and believes that she has found fulfillment in the organization's teachings. What she has actually done is make a horrid mess of her life and her friends step in to correct her ways.

It's a very funny and relatable story.

Every story in this collection is relatable and funny.

Favorites include:

"Privacy and Coffee" in which a woman inexplicably decides to take up residence on the roof of her best friend's apartment building.

"Something Shiny" chronicles a best-selling memoirist who sells the screenplay rights to Hollywood. She invites the actress playing her into her home and then slowly watches as the actress takes over her life, until the memoirist, in fact, no longer exists.

"Return From The Depot!", about a daughter convinced that her mother has returned from the grave and is now the star of a hit television series about the ordeal. She is also now married to Alan Thicke. This story is similar in tone and conceit to "Christina" in which a lonely woman has conversations with the ghost of a baby who died in her apartment. I mention them both together because they are very similar, but they are both equally good.

"Josie and Hyman Differ in Their Use of the Word 'Fuck'" in which a young lady finds her boyfriend to be an elitist piece of shit, but doesn't have to balls to say so.

It's a bizarre batch of stories. But I enjoyed them a great deal. I am reminded sometimes of David Foster Wallace in her use of run-on sentences, footnotes, and humor. But she isn't as overwhelmingly pretentious as Wallace can be. Elizabeth Crane is David Foster Wallace for people who want a little more accessibility.

Highly recommended.

[gwen g · Rating 5 out of 5]

Elizabeth Crane is just hitting my sweet spot right now -- I haven't allowed myself much fiction since I started school and am trying to read about reference services before I fall asleep, but I cracked on the long bus ride to and from NYC.

When the Messenger is Hot felt like a continuation of All This Heavenly Glory to me, although Crane wrote Messenger first and I'm sure it Glory felt that way to people who read them in the right order. Both books have the same breathlessness, the same introspective and semi-self-obsessed themes, the same connected stories written by narrators that it's hard not to assume are Crane herself, the same play with stream-of-consciousness language and punctuation. I love it.

An example from "Proposal," a story about getting rid of Valentine's Day:

So that is my proposal, that we take this day and call up our people and we send them cards that are made out of whatever, and we tell them things, we can just say, Hey, hey, you, if we can't think of anything else, or if we are not the type of people to tell our friends we love them, you know, openly. Or we can even go ahead and tell them cheesy things if we are the type of people who like cheesy things as long as we make up the cheesy things ourselves, we can tell them why we're glad they're alive and tell them to call us tomorrow and say they're okay. Because otherwise my best hope is that years from now, when these people who have lost people meet new people, when they get new valentines and new champagne and roses and proposals and Vegas weddings, that this day will at best rise to the level of bittersweet. (145-6)

[Kelly W · Rating 4 out of 5]

Elizabeth Crane's prose is smart yet straightforward, funny yet meaningful. In When the Messenger Is Hot, she experiments with form and point of view while creating memorable characters and scenarios.

There are lots of stories in this book, so I'll just highlight a couple of my favorites. The opener, "The Archetypes Girlfriend," is more of an extended description than a traditional story. Is there such thing as a stereotypical idiosyncrasy? Yes: Crane manages to display tons of them as she hilariously examines several personas of women who get under the skin of vulnerable men. Another standout is "Christina," in which the narrator encounters a dancing ghost baby in her home who she chats with on a day to day basis.

The main thing that makes this book short of spectacular is its repetitious themes. Which isn't automatically bad...it's just that she exhausts them through the stories. The death of a mother, dating debacles, and the habitat comparison of Chicago vs. New York became predictable. The stories could have been presented freshly without incorporating these same ideas over and over again. It made the stories feel overly autobiographical--like the writer was having a difficult time detaching herself from every character she created.

[Harriet M. · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really liked Crane's second collection of stories, All This Heavenly Glory, but these stories were neither differentiated enough nor linked enough to be as satisfying as her second book. Most of the stories here deal with, at least in passing, a dead/dying mother and rehab and all feature the same kind of breathless narration and quirky interpolation of odd details and supernatural elements. It was a little too much of the same for me (I had a similar reaction when reading all of John Irving's books-- one is really unique and interesting, but after a while they all feel like they're the same book). "Year-at-a-glance" is one I'd definitely recommend and read again. It was the simplest and most eloquent of the stories about the dying mother, which I can only assume is drawn from Crane's own experience (the book is dedicated "for Mom, in memory). Here the breathless voice is harnessed as a sort of survival mechanism, its frenetic pace suggesting a thinly disguised grief and dismay.

[Tracy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I bought this in a train station while I was there by myself, in hopes that reading something chick-lit would help focus my nerves. The collection itself isn't so bad, but it was a little bland for me. They are mostly just general short fiction tales, with some "fantasy" elements, like in the story "Return From the Depot!" how a woman's mother comes back from the dead three years after she died, explaining that it was a mix-up at some bus station in limbo. Then there's the title story, which is about a woman who wants to sleep with this hot guy who won't let her because he keeps spouting things about faith. Then there's another story with that has "fucking" in its title about a woman who dates a guy who likes to only use the word "fuck" as a sexual thing and insists that dark chocolate is the best thing in the world. So it's varied. Good thing to read when you are waiting for a plane or a train or such though.

[Jillian · Rating 1 out of 5]

Okay, so I am between one and two stars for this review...It's not that this wasn't entertaining--it was in some places. Definitely a beach read book. Requires very little attention. I guess I'll choose a one star rating because I really didn't like Crane's portrayal of women--they came across as helpless, unable to see their own faults, all making stupid decisions (primarily about men), and lacking self-awareness. This would be okay for a couple of stories, but it seemed like it was the formula that happened in every story, and by the mid-point of the book, I was ready to shake the characters....and then I just found myself annoyed with everyone and rolling my eyes.

[Julia · Rating 3 out of 5]

I just walked into a random used bookstore in Bayview and found this. What are the odds?

I liked these well enough. They were an extremely quick read- I read most of it during a session on the stationary bike. I still have to read the story with "New Zealand" in the title. The stories were warm and cute, although "Christina" and "Return from the Depot!" reminded me a little too much of the American suburban magic realism that Douglas Coupland has tried so many times to mostly very annoying results. I read this right after finishing Anagrams, and that might have been a strange frame of mind - it's just similar enough, but with crucial differences in outlook and tone.

[Kristen · Rating 3 out of 5]

All of her stories take the tone of a gossipy friend, telling you her latest troubles over a couple tall cups of Starbucks' best. Some stories suffer from too many cow patties, some from a structure little better than a fleshed-out list. Crane's sentences run on and on. Taking her all in one chunk tried my patience some, unless it was a really charming or compelling story, i.e., "Privacy and Coffee," "Year-at-a-Glance,", "Christina" and "Something Shiny," which was about a girl who wrote her memoirs. Then Hollywood wanted to make them into a movie. Then the actress hired to play the author came to study her habits and mannerisms. Great fun.

[A · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read her later collection of short stories and those were much stronger. Maybe if I hadn't read the collections back to back I would have liked this one better but two collections with the same voice in nearly all the stories is a bit much. Crane seems to put a lot of herself into her protagonists. And, she's very likable but it becomes a bit tiresome since it's the same refrain. Plus, the use of run-ons was confusing at times and broke up the flow of her writing. I get it, I just wished she could convey it in shorter sentences.

[Amanda Bynum · Rating 2 out of 5]

My best friend gave me this book for Christmas in 2005, and while I love her very much, I don't think she read this book all the way through - because within this collection of short stories there are at least three stories of "my mother is dying/died of cancer" - and wouldn't you know it, my OWN mother was dying of cancer at the very same time. Not exactly fun reading. But, taken separately from that, the stories are fun and fluffy but not brilliantly written. This one is just OK.

[Ruth Conrad · Rating 3 out of 5]

These are interesting short stories narrated by neurotic but literate women. The stories definitely held my interest, as I kept hoping for some stability to enter the lives of these weird women. Some of the sentences filled a page as the characters listed, outlined, or even footnoted the explanations for the unsettling events in their lives. All in all, the tone is entertaining and upbeat rather than depressing.

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really great story collection. At first, I kind of felt like each story was just sort of a rehashing of the previous one, but then I realized that the continuing thematic elements weren't a cop out, that is was more that each story seemed to inform the one that followed it, I really found myself caught up in the collection. The story "An Intervention..." in particular really left me feeling satisfied. No glowingly happy endings, but who says you need those anyway.

[Nancy Monson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gloriously written collection of short stories. Crane's "stream of consciousness" writing can get a bit tedious at times, but truly does add to the effect. My favs: "The Daves" (frighteningly close to home story about a gal who just dates too many "Daves" only to realize that they are really just one "Dave") and "The Super Fantastic New Zealand Triangle" which might as well be about just the one "Dave."

[Jen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading this book right now is kind of like viewing conceptual art--I appreciated the concepts behind a lot of the stories more than their actual execution as stories. The first story made me wonder how someone decided that this book was even publishable; somewhere in the middle it reminded me of the last chapter of Ulysses. Somewhere in between is how I'd rate this--sometimes bold and funny and sometimes a mess.

[Megriffe · Rating 3 out of 5]

I alternated between loving and hating the author during almost every-other story of the book. What I loved was that I felt like certain things were relatable, and that her metaphors were intelligent and unique. What I hated was that I felt like all of the main characters were the same. I also had an issue with the lack of punctuation. I don't know if it was for the sake of the writing or just poor editing. Maybe I just didn't understand. Some of the stories definitely stuck with me though.

[Mandy Sisk · Rating 1 out of 5]

I hated this book. Every short story would start out exciting and I would get interested, then it would turn into some rediculous twist and I would ask myself, "why am I wasting my time with this book?" I only continued so I could say, " I did it. I threw away hours of my time just to tell everyone to avoid this book like the plague."