If you’re tired of trying to pick something to watch on one of your half a dozen streaming services, maybe it’s time to read a short story instead. They may just be the perfect antidote to binge watching. Elizabeth McCracken’s latest collection ‘The Souvenir Museum,’ is a good place to start….Do yourself a favor and read the book. McCracken has delivered a lovely collection of stories.
This incisive, warm-blooded collection of stories is populated by outsiders: expatriates and repatriates, Vikings, travelling ventriloquists. . . . Whether it’s over the course of a honeymoon in Amsterdam or a day at a Texas water park, McCracken illuminates qualities of human nature through fragments of her characters’ lives.
The Souvenir Museum is McCracken's third story collection, and her understanding of how we stumble up against these painful realities unfurls on every page. Tuned into absurdities and disasters, she knows our losses are calamitous, our connections precarious…McCracken's prose is wry and exquisite, a good companion to her generous, comic observations.
McCracken, herself, is a hard-working performer, an acrobat who dazzles with her verbal flexibility and lands the end of each tightly composed story with incredible skill — and feeling. Her inimitable images heighten the delight…McCracken's writing is never dull…[a]fantastic collection.
You know how Aaron Sorkin tilt-shifts reality to bring idealism to the forefront? McCracken is like that but for humor. In her realm, everything is funny — to somebody, if not always to the protagonist. Even the darkest and saddest moments may be laced with sweet, tall-tale absurdity. Her new collection The Souvenir Museum has more of what made her 2019 novel Bowlaway such a hit. It’s full of stories set in the real world but just cockeyed enough to pass as apocryphal family folklore told at a Thanksgiving dinner table once everybody’s full of pie and wine.
McCracken knows all kinds of subtle, enticing secrets of the heart and conveys them in silky, transparent language.”
This incisive, warm-blooded collection of stories is populated by outsiders: expatriates and repatriates, Vikings, travelling ventriloquists. . . . Whether it’s over the course of a honeymoon in Amsterdam or a day at a Texas water park, McCracken illuminates qualities of human nature through fragments of her characters’ lives.
Elizabeth McCracken is a master of the short story and each of the stories in this gem of a collection shows a different facet of the human experience, shining all the brighter for having had McCracken's attention paid to it for a little while.
Wry, emotionally complex family stories. . . . McCracken is a tremendously sharp, soulful, and witty writer, rightfully considered one of finest American short story practitioners at work today.
The master stylist and author of Bowlaway rolls another strike with this magnificent array of idiosyncratic love stories.
The 12 stories collected in Elizabeth McCracken's The Souvenir Museum are skillfully crafted miniatures that feature unfailingly ordinary characters whose lives she uses to illuminate truths about love, longing and the elusive search for connection…The personal discoveries unearthed by characters like these may seem inconsequential, but they are anything but that. They're the stories of choices, turning points and epiphanies that are the stuff of life itself, and of indelible moments Elizabeth McCracken preserves in these unpretentious tales…In a dozen stories, Elizabeth McCracken excels at capturing the kinds of moments that often escape our notice.”
“ There’s good reason a new Elizabeth McCracken book is cause for celebration: everything she writes—her short stories, her novels, and, hey, also a memoir—is consistently brilliant. Her work is the perfect amount of odd, witty, tender, and deceptively heart-splitting. I can’t wait.
Elizabeth McCracken is a national treasure.
[McCracken] writes from pain and makes something beautiful from it, and, because she is a writer of remarkable sensitivity and has such a light touch, because so much love is in the observation, something wonderful happens, a kind of transcendence. The mundane becomes profound, and, against all odds, the reader is left feeling uplifted.”
McCracken knows all kinds of subtle, enticing secrets of the heart and conveys them in silky, transparent language.”
null San Francisco Chronicle
11/01/2020
A National Book Award finalist for The Giant's House , McCracken also shines in short fiction; Thunderstruck & Other Stories won the 2014 Story Prize andwas long-listed for the National Book Award. Her subject here is the family bond, whether between a widow andher adult son looking for puffins in Scotland or a children's-show actressand the washed-up brother withwhom she celebrates on New Year'sEve. With a 75,000-copy first printing.
★ 2020-12-26Bowlaway (2019), McCracken switches gears and proves her mastery of short fiction with these 12 tightly structured, searingly realistic stories.
Four linked stories about a couple named Jack and Sadie are interspersed throughout and form the book’s unifying spine. The opener, “The Irish Wedding,” refers to Jack’s sister’s nuptials, where Jewish American Sadie meets Jack’s British family for the first time. Intimations of the fault lines in their relationship are revealed along with hints that it may last despite them. Enduring love—along with the urge to resist it—is this volume’s common theme, whether in relationships between parents and children, lovers, ex-lovers, friends, and even in-laws. In “Robinson Crusoe at the Waterpark,” a few seconds of panic cause a middle-aged gay man to drop his wry surface detachment and acknowledge his commitment toward his more emotive partner and their child. While in Denmark ostensibly to visit Legoland with her 10-year-old son, the divorced bookkeeper of the title story juggles her complicated feelings for the boy with her dead father’s final request to find her long-lost former boyfriend and give him a bequest. "A Walk-Through the Human Heart" illuminates the vein of cruelty that sometimes runs through parental love, making it all the more powerful, as a mother desperately searches vintage shops for the Baby Alive doll she refused to buy her grown, now-pregnant daughter as an 8-year-old. “Birdsong From the Radio,” about a stay-at-home suburban mother whose love grows destructive, shows the risk of caring too much. McCracken’s stories are often heartbreaking, but those about Jack and Sadie are particularly incisive, showing all the hidden crevices of a long-term relationship. Over the course of the book, both characters are pulled between the urges to disguise and reveal themselves, to cling and to run. By the last story, when they marry 20 years after they met, they still harbor resentments and deep disagreements. But what longtime couple doesn’t?
An astonishingly powerful collection worth multiple readings.
“ This incisive, warm-blooded collection of stories is populated by outsiders: expatriates and repatriates, Vikings, travelling ventriloquists. . . . Whether it’s over the course of a honeymoon in Amsterdam or a day at a Texas water park, McCracken illuminates qualities of human nature through fragments of her characters’ lives.” — The New Yorker
“Charming and sly, these 12 far-flung stories—from a Texas water park to a rugged Scottish island—share McCracken’s tender appreciation for flawed people (struggling lovers, a grieving mother, a puppeteer) just trying to communicate.” — People
“Elizabeth McCracken’s impressive third story collection evoke moving depictions of marriage and parenthood, and love, betrayal, and loneliness…A steady stream of exquisite writing.” — The Boston Globe
“The Souvenir Museum is McCracken's third story collection, and her understanding of how we stumble up against these painful realities unfurls on every page. Tuned into absurdities and disasters, she knows our losses are calamitous, our connections precarious…McCracken's prose is wry and exquisite, a good companion to her generous, comic observations.” — Minneapolis Star Tribune
“ You know how Aaron Sorkin tilt-shifts reality to bring idealism to the forefront? McCracken is like that but for humor. In her realm, everything is funny — to somebody, if not always to the protagonist. Even the darkest and saddest moments may be laced with sweet, tall-tale absurdity. Her new collection The Souvenir Museum has more of what made her 2019 novel Bowlaway such a hit. It’s full of stories set in the real world but just cockeyed enough to pass as apocryphal family folklore told at a Thanksgiving dinner table once everybody’s full of pie and wine.” — Philadelphia Inquirer
“McCracken knows all kinds of subtle, enticing secrets of the heart and conveys them in silky, transparent language.” — San Francisco Chronicle
“If you’re tired of trying to pick something to watch on one of your half a dozen streaming services, maybe it’s time to read a short story instead. They may just be the perfect antidote to binge watching. Elizabeth McCracken’s latest collection ‘The Souvenir Museum,’ is a good place to start….Do yourself a favor and read the book. McCracken has delivered a lovely collection of stories.” — Associated Press
“Deftly melding tragedy and comedy, McCracken displays her signature wit while examining how the bonds of family are tested and transformed over time.” — Austin Monthly
“McCracken, herself, is a hard-working performer, an acrobat who dazzles with her verbal flexibility and lands the end of each tightly composed story with incredible skill — and feeling. Her inimitable images heighten the delight…McCracken's writing is never dull…[a]fantastic collection.” — NPR.org
“Elizabeth McCracken’s latest (and best, so far) collection…there is, in these stories, a kind of compulsive noticing, and the resultant prose is so plush that it may be read happily for the language alone, though there is much more at work here….a novel’s worth of humor, tension, love, sorrow, and irrationality.” — Harvard Review
“Wry, emotionally complex family stories. . . . McCracken is a tremendously sharp, soulful, and witty writer, rightfully considered one of finest American short story practitioners at work today.” — Literary Hub
"I love short stories, I think that we’re not reading enough of them . . . [Elizabeth McCracken] is one of my favorites . . . her stories are about family and redemption, intimacy…Dive into this collection.” — Harlan Coben (on Today)
“The master stylist and author of Bowlaway rolls another strike with this magnificent array of idiosyncratic love stories.” — Oprah Daily
“Elizabeth McCracken is a master of the short story and each of the stories in this gem of a collection shows a different facet of the human experience, shining all the brighter for having had McCracken's attention paid to it for a little while.” — Refinery 29
“[A]n assured collection… McCracken opens up worlds in a mere sentence, and every page is illuminated with nuanced observations of human behavior.” — Booklist
“McCracken’s sly, emotionally complex collection (after Bowlaway ) focuses on characters uprooted from their usual surroundings. . . . Each story opens to reveal a whole life spent within the web of a family, chosen or not. Full of gems, this collection is a winner.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“McCracken . . . proves her mastery of short fiction with these 12 tightly structured, searingly realistic stories. . . . Enduring love—along with the urge to resist it—is this volume’s common theme, whether in relationships between parents and children, lovers, ex-lovers, friends, and even in-laws. . . . An astonishingly powerful collection worth multiple readings.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“The 12 stories collected in Elizabeth McCracken's The Souvenir Museum are skillfully crafted miniatures that feature unfailingly ordinary characters whose lives she uses to illuminate truths about love, longing and the elusive search for connection…The personal discoveries unearthed by characters like these may seem inconsequential, but they are anything but that. They're the stories of choices, turning points and epiphanies that are the stuff of life itself, and of indelible moments Elizabeth McCracken preserves in these unpretentious tales…In a dozen stories, Elizabeth McCracken excels at capturing the kinds of moments that often escape our notice.” — Shelf Awareness
“There’s good reason a new Elizabeth McCracken book is cause for celebration: everything she writes—her short stories, her novels, and, hey, also a memoir—is consistently brilliant. Her work is the perfect amount of odd, witty, tender, and deceptively heart-splitting. I can’t wait.” — The Millions
Elizabeth McCracken’s impressive third story collection evoke moving depictions of marriage and parenthood, and love, betrayal, and loneliness…A steady stream of exquisite writing.
Deftly melding tragedy and comedy, McCracken displays her signature wit while examining how the bonds of family are tested and transformed over time.
Elizabeth McCracken’s latest (and best, so far) collection…there is, in these stories, a kind of compulsive noticing, and the resultant prose is so plush that it may be read happily for the language alone, though there is much more at work here….a novel’s worth of humor, tension, love, sorrow, and irrationality.
Charming and sly, these 12 far-flung stories—from a Texas water park to a rugged Scottish island—share McCracken’s tender appreciation for flawed people (struggling lovers, a grieving mother, a puppeteer) just trying to communicate.
[A]n assured collection… McCracken opens up worlds in a mere sentence, and every page is illuminated with nuanced observations of human behavior.
"I love short stories, I think that we’re not reading enough of them . . . [Elizabeth McCracken] is one of my favorites . . . her stories are about family and redemption, intimacy…Dive into this collection.
[A]n assured collection… McCracken opens up worlds in a mere sentence, and every page is illuminated with nuanced observations of human behavior.
"[McCracken] never promises us freedom from pain, but she always offers just enough heart to endure it. . . . There’s a wickedness to McCracken’s technique, the way she lures us in with her witty voice and oddball characters but then kicks the wind out of us. She never misses the infamous 7-10 split, managing to hit Annie Proulx and Anne Tyler with the same ball."
Elizabeth McCracken is one of my favorite writers. . . . She writes with acuity, soul, and a kind of easy grace that probably kills her, about characters she has created to love. . . . Anything new by her is an excuse for wild, drunken celebration.
"Always...shining through the carefully, beautifully painted grays, is the clarity of McCracken's humor, bright and invigorating, like flickers of sunlight. Humor illuminates her work, revealing things clearly that we might have overlooked. McCracken refuses to distinguish between the absurdity of comedy and the absurdity of tragedy."
An award-winning author writes her eighth book, and an award-winning narrator records it. The superb audio short stories that result are hysterical, heartrending, wise, unexpected, and weird. Weird in a good way—does a bereaved mother actually transform into a monstrous animal, or does she just feel like one? Kate Reading’s deep, melodic voice reveals the very marrow of Elizabeth McCracken’s memorable tales of love, family, and perseverance. She transforms into whatever character walks onto the page, be they an adolescent American boy, an aging male radio show host, a female ventriloquist, or a family of English upper-crust types, plus one Dutchman. In between the sparking dialogue, she narrates clearly, seriously, and, when needed, sardonically, as befits these witty, sagacious tales. A.C.S. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine
An award-winning author writes her eighth book, and an award-winning narrator records it. The superb audio short stories that result are hysterical, heartrending, wise, unexpected, and weird. Weird in a good way—does a bereaved mother actually transform into a monstrous animal, or does she just feel like one? Kate Reading’s deep, melodic voice reveals the very marrow of Elizabeth McCracken’s memorable tales of love, family, and perseverance. She transforms into whatever character walks onto the page, be they an adolescent American boy, an aging male radio show host, a female ventriloquist, or a family of English upper-crust types, plus one Dutchman. In between the sparking dialogue, she narrates clearly, seriously, and, when needed, sardonically, as befits these witty, sagacious tales. A.C.S. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine
