jessiruckman

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.

2023-06-16 18:30