Here's Your Hat What's Your Hurry: Stories

Rating:
Summary: I'll read any and every word this woman writes
Review: I love Elizabeth McCracken. When I read this line in "Some Have Entertained Angels Unaware," I knew that I would follow its writer anywhere she wanted to take me: "Dad was thin then - maybe still is - and as chinless and gloomy as a clarinet." McCracken is a wonder, with characters, with language, and with the twisting roads of a story. I can feel only grateful that she is a writer and that we get to read what she puts on the page.

Rating:
Summary: My new favorite author?
Review: I picked this book up on a whim. I'd never heard of McCracken, but I liked the title. What a wonderful surprise!
I read a lot of short story collections, but I have to admit that I usually approach them with a sense of duty, not anticipation. (For me, reading short stories is like eating broccoli; I do it because I think I ought to, not because it's fun). But "Here's Your Hat.." is a joyous exception. THis collection is as readable and compelling as the best of novels.
McCracken's writing is beautiful --artistic but understated-- and her stories are like nothing else I've read. Funny and tragic at the same time. She has a taste for the bizarre; her characters range from the slightly odd to the downright freakish, but she somehow maintains complete believability. In general, I am turned off by "endearingly quirky" characters because they usually seem so contrived (think of that movie, "Benny and Joon" and you'll know what I mean). But McCracken is such a talented writer that she can make you feel a powerful affinity with even the most outlandish person.
I especially enjoyed "It's Bad Luck to Die", and the title story (both these pieces have final lines that will take your breath away) but all the stories in this book are excellent.
In short, if you don't read this collection, you're missing out. And if McCracken's two novels turn out to be as good as her short stories, I think I may have a new favorite author.

Rating:
Summary: A marvelous writer is one thing, but a good storyteller. . .
Review: I was drawn to THE GIANT'S HOUSE because of its marvelous cover. I read the first paragraph while still in the bookstore. I was knocked out by the straightforwardness of the language. Reminded me of my mother's relatives in Brookville, Pa. I had withdrawal when I finished, so I quickly scooped up HERE'S YOUR HAT. . . Loved it, too. What a shocker I had when I came to the end of the story "Secretary of State." The narrator says she goes from being a "Savitz" to being a "Barron." Well, darned if I'm not a Savitz. Not a common name, so I'd like to know how to get ahold of E. McCracken. I love her work. I sure hope we're related. Bobbie Savitz, Portland, Oregon

Rating:
Summary: A New Star
Review: McCracken is a writer destined to explode in popularity sometime soon. She's the real thing, a writer to the bone, with a voice that invades your sleep and characters who become more real than the people in your own house. At her best delineating the interior life of children and eccentrics, McCracken's stories have a timeless quality - you'd never mistake them as part of some ephemeral trend. She writes beautifully but invisibly, a rare talent these days. Every story in this collection is a polished gem, but "June" and "Here's Your Hat..." are signature pieces (and you'll not soon forget the latter's final line). I've given The Giant's House as a gift more than once and found it was passed on down the line, reader to reader, new fan to new fan. McCracken was one of Granta's picks for the best new young American writers. She shines above the majority of the other picks. Buy the book. Read the stories at breakfast and before bed. Then, when Oprah is singing her praises, you can say, "I knew about her way back when."

Rating:
Summary: I'll read any and every word this woman writes
Review: The only part of the "write up" on the covers of this book (in paperback versioning) that I agree with is: utterly unforgettable. I won't be forgetting this book any time soon.

"It's Bad Luck To Die" was lacking. All you knew about the main characters by the time you read the last line of this particular story was already told to you in the first 5 paragraphs. Tiny was a tatoo artist.

You didn't learn much more about him than that or his age. The characters presented in the story were only one faceted, or at least that is all the writer cared to show about them. I am only guessing that the humorous part in the story was when he informed his wife that he purposefully gave the George Washington tattoo on her body a frown so that when she got older, gravity effects on her body would turn it into a smile. Oh my yes ... that was a knee slapper.

I wanted to hear more about the woman telling the story. What made her "click", more about her parents or at least more about her mother, more about what she thought about her marriage, but she seemed to only rotate around Tiny - as if the writer was unconsciously relaying that if it weren't for him or him tatooing her body, teh main character was unneeded - wouldn't have a story to tell; thus she wasn't important as a person in her own right outside of the tattoos on her body after he died?

In the second story, that was conveniently presented in 3 divisions, you were left wondering what you had just read. She crammed the story with people and a bit more visual information that the first story didn't offer (well, you knew how Tiny's Tattoo Shop looked and was set up), but NO character development to speak of.

The main character (again, as in the above story, the story was written 1st person) you were left wondering ok... they told this story, they lived this story, but WHO were they? The brother was basically ornamental background character as were all the other people. I felt that I knew less about them, even with 3 parts of their story being shared, than I did about the wife of the tattoo artist.

Way too many people written in to float in and out of the story that I quickly forgot it was to be centered around a brother and sister. People brought in to do or say something "pivotal" then shoved to the background to bring another one forward, but no depth given to them as a person or their actions. Nothing was thought about the father deserting the family until he came back to sell the house outside of one of the tenants saying essentially "I guess we will raise the children" ... and this was within a few scant lines of finding out he had left?

The most I got about the children's thoughts about their father deserting them, after their mother had died , was 1. one didn't care to read the postcards he sent, and 2. the other child tacked the postcards up on a wall to read them ... they seemed more than content being raised by "strangers"/tenants of their home, not being phased by the death of their mother or the sneaking out in the middle of night by Dad until they were older, then they didn't approve but no idea as to how they formulated this unapproval of his past actions since they were content with his leaving and how they were being raised prior to that.

Their mother was shoved in the background as soon as possible. She lived, got married, had 2 children, and died. That is all you know about. This is story being told by one of her children and it was her death that helped spawn some events to have happened. But ... she is only given maybe 6 lines of thought until later when one of the tenants comes down wearing one of her dresses saying something like "I hope you don't mind, I found this ..." and the father basically shrugging his shoulders saying "It just belonged to someone who once stayed here ...". The person telling this story to you didn't share what they felt about the person wearing the dress or what their father had said.

I suppose the writer wanted to leave it up to the reader to fill in these gaps to the stories with their own imagination ... but I bought the book to have the writer share with me their imagination and how they would fill in these gaps with their created characters.

If these were the selected lead in style of storytelling for the rest of the book, the baiting to get a person to want to turn the pages to see what other morsels offered for reading, I did not care to read other offbeat, funny, daring, heartbreaking, or utterly unforgettable stories offered between the covers of this book.

The characters are more easily forgotten than the fact that you actually took time to try to find out what the characters were to be about or who they were. A true disappointment.

Rating:
Summary: My new favorite author?
Review: Well, as a previous reviewer has said, I'm hooked. I've read "The Giant's House," I've read, "Niagara Falls," and then, there is this truly unforgettable collection of characters... and they are truly a collection.

What McCracken is selling here is the kind of figurines you'd order from an 800 number and store for posterity on a handsome pine display shelf. Except these "figurines" are sculpted in words, some of the most beautiful, haunting, captivating words you can imagine. And they're all set in stories, each one a limited-edition display piece of cutting wit and honest, hopeful humanity.

I'd say Elizabeth McCracken is, along with Lorrie Moore, my favourite "emerging" fictioneer, and I am breathlessly awaiting her next entry. Frankly, I'd happily read her shopping lists while I'm waiting, desperately soaking up as many of her fabulous words as I can.

Rating:
Summary: Never Fails to Captivate...
Review: Well, as a previous reviewer has said, I'm hooked. I've read "The Giant's House," I've read, "Niagara Falls," and then, there is this truly unforgettable collection of characters... and they are truly a collection.

What McCracken is selling here is the kind of figurines you'd order from an 800 number and store for posterity on a handsome pine display shelf. Except these "figurines" are sculpted in words, some of the most beautiful, haunting, captivating words you can imagine. And they're all set in stories, each one a limited-edition display piece of cutting wit and honest, hopeful humanity.

I'd say Elizabeth McCracken is, along with Lorrie Moore, my favourite "emerging" fictioneer, and I am breathlessly awaiting her next entry. Frankly, I'd happily read her shopping lists while I'm waiting, desperately soaking up as many of her fabulous words as I can.