All This Heavenly Glory - Hardcover

Crane, Elizabeth

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0316000892 ISBN 13: 9780316000895

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company, 2005

Synopsis

Her life marked by such challenges as a best friend's betrayal, substance abuse, and the slow death of a parent, Charlotte Anne Byers navigates the turbulent waters of her career and the dating scene while working with an opera house children's choir.

About this title

Review

In All This Heavenly Glory, Elizabeth Crane's second collection of interconnected stories, readers are taken on an amusing, if slightly disjointed journey through the life of Charlotte Anne Byers, a spunky six-year-old who grows into a cynical, yet cautiously optimistic adult. Those who enjoyed Crane's debut, When the Messenger Is Hot, will surely recognize and appreciate her sharp-witted humor and emotional honesty, but new readers may be put off by her somewhat rambling writing style.

When we first meet Charlotte Anne, she is in the middle of penning a seven-page personal ad that is actually one long sentence, complete with tons of semi-colons and a few alphabetical lists thrown in for good measure. The ad itself is quite hilarious, it begins with a physical description and ends with a hilarious tribute to Owen Wilson; however, the lack of sentence structure may begin to confuse readers after about two pages. This first story is a template for much of what follows in the next 17 vignettes--witty, heartfelt and graceful sentiments are often marred by a chaotic rendering that makes it difficult to actually follow along with the protagonist.

Still, Crane makes it wrothwhile for readers who can navigate the choppy waters of her writing style. She's at her best when describing Charlotte's feelings about particular places, be it New York ("Charlotte has been trying to get out of New York for years. It's not nearly as simple as booking a one-way flight. People get drawn back. Places seem inferior."), L.A. ("there's nothing but Fat Burgers and short pink buildings and more freeways on the freeway..."), or the imaginary Midwestern town she hopes to live in during her next life ("...I sit on the stoop and smoke my one (stale) cigarette of the week from my gold vinyl cigarette case under the almost dark five o'clock sky...").

If we're lucky, perhaps next time Crane will make these stirring moments of clarity easier for us to find. --Gisele Toueg

About the Author

ELIZABETH CRANE I grew up in Manhattan on the Upper West Side in something of a musical family; my mother was an opera singer, my father is a musicologist, my stepdad manages classical musicians. (My stepmom, with a background in school psychology, is a Mediator and Mediation Trainer. But she can carry a tune too.) My own career as an opera singer (in the children's chorus at New York City Opera) was cut short by a massive case of stage fright before I hit fifth grade; it may or may not be coincidental that I'd taken up writing by this point, after having read Harriet the Spy (admittedly, at this point, a cliché, but it's true) when I was eight. In fifth grade they held a contest at school to write a caption for a photo of two pigs kissing — "I've just met a girl named Maria!" won me ten dollars, which I still consider to be the beginning of my current career. (No need to point out how many decades passed before I would be financially compensated again for my literary achievements.) Fast forward X number of decades and X number of career missteps to a level of dissatisfaction significant enough to compel me to take a shot at some kind of actual career from my childhood passion. (Okay, I taught for a number of years, and that was fun, but I was unsurprisingly overworked and underpaid, and also trying to write in my spare time, which was somewhat nonexistent.) Some of my favorite web sites are McSweeneys, Free Will Astrology (check it out — I know nothing about astrology, but it's called Free Will for a reason, and the guy who writes them is very funny, but guaranteed they will freak you out), FreeTranslation.com (when you're bored, type a passage into any language, get the translation, and then translate it back — guaranteed humor value. Found magazine (a site of found notes, lists, etc. that have a weirdly literary/arty feel), eBay (because you can never have too many Little Kiddles). Favorite childhood books: The Bad Child's Book of Beasts, From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, The Complete Nonsense of Edward Lear, The Phantom Tollbooth. Now: anything by George Saunders, Ken Kalfus, David Foster Wallace, Rick Moody, Aimee Bender, Lydia Davis, Lorrie Moore. Recent favorite books include The Feast of Love by Charles Baxter, and Dear Mr. President by Gabe Hudson. Elizabeth Crane's stories have appeared in The Sycamore Review, Washington Square, Weep Daily, New York Stories, Book, The Florida Review, and Eclipse. She lives in Chicago.

About this edition

• Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0316000892
• ISBN 13: 9780316000895
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 240