When the Messenger Is Hot

Elizabeth Crane

ISBN 10: 1536639303 ISBN 13: 9781536639308

Publisher: Audible Studios on Brilliance Audio, 2017

Synopsis

The women in When the Messenger Is Hot are fierce and kind, damaged and optimistic. They are recovering from loss or addiction or betrayal; they are on the fringes of reality or sanity or a "conventional" life. From a woman who decides to live on the patio rooftop of her friend's apartment building, to the best-selling memoir writer who finds her identity overtaken by the actress cast in the movie version, to the daughter convinced her dead mother is in fact simply stuck at a North Dakota bus depot, their experiences of loss and love are both uniquely theirs and universal.

With disarming humor, honesty, and playfulness, Elizabeth Crane gleefully and memorably explores the absurdities and possibilities of modern life.

About this title

About the Author

Elizabeth Crane is the author of three 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). Her work has been featured in Other Voices, Mississippi Review, Bridge, the Chicago Reader, the Believer, and several anthologies including McSweeney’s Future Dictionary of America, The Best Underground Fiction, Loser, Altared, and The Show I’ll Never Forget. She is a regular contributor to Writer’s Block Party on WBEZ Chicago. In 2003 she received the Chicago Public Library 21st Century Award. She currently teaches creative writing and lives in Chicago with her husband and their dog.

No Bio

From Publishers Weekly

Crane creates a spirited cast of loopy, neurotic and self-absorbed women, then puts them through their paces in this debut collection of 16 inventive but frequently one-dimensional stories. Dating is a primary concern, as in "The Archetype's Girlfriend," a tongue-in-cheek description of the common attributes and behaviors of gorgeous, over-the-top women who drive men crazy. "You Take Naps" is a similarly short but amusing checklist of romantic red flags drawn up by a 41-year-old woman who begins dating younger men, while "Normal," the tale of a man who begins seeing a woman with a penchant for knives, takes the dating theme into (slightly) scarier terrain. The two most impressive stories in the collection, "Year-at-a-Glance" and "Return from the Depot!" delve into the issue of loss, imaginatively splicing grief and humor. In "Return from the Depot!" the protagonist insists that her recently deceased mother will be coming home soon. Her friends tell her she's in denial, but then her mother really does return-from a bus depot in North Dakota-and becomes a celebrity and the star of a TV sitcom. Crane's machine-gun, first-person narration is entertaining in small doses, but its magazine-style pertness grows tiresome over the course of the collection. Similarly, Crane's bratty, city born-and-bred protagonists-the kind of women whose first thought is "Susan Minot" when "MNT" is traced on a Ouija board-rarely break out of their wisecracking personas. Still, the tart wit and sharp comic timing of these urban fictions will appeal to readers who relish jokes involving both Friends and Elizabeth Kbler-Ross.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Audible Studios on Brilliance Audio
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 1536639303
• ISBN 13: 9781536639308
• Binding: MP3 CD