Rating: 
Summary: Marvelous!
Review: A wonderfully wise, truly original collection--I'll be buying copies for my friends.
Rating: 
Summary: a bit quirky, a lot of fun
Review: Elizabeth Crane has written a highly enjoyable first collection of short stories. While not laugh out loud funny, the book offers up more than a handful of inside chuckle moments. From the AA member who only drank once, to the woman who abandons her former life and builds a house on a rooftop- the narrators are consistently strange and altogether human.The books one downfall is its limited range. The stories are great, but they all sound like the same person is narrating. The book would have worked better as chapters/stories about one woman's life. I didn't believe the stories were being told to me by a bunch a different women. That fault aside, I recommend this book! It made me smile the smile of a co-conspirator.
Rating:
Summary: a bit quirky, a lot of fun
Review: Elizabeth Crane has written a highly enjoyable first collection of short stories. While not laugh out loud funny, the book offers up more than a handful of inside chuckle moments. From the AA member who only drank once, to the woman who abandons her former life and builds a house on a rooftop- the narrators are consistently strange and altogether human. The books one downfall is its limited range. The stories are great, but they all sound like the same person is narrating. The book would have worked better as chapters/stories about one woman's life. I didn't believe the stories were being told to me by a bunch a different women. That fault aside, I recommend this book! It made me smile the smile of a co-conspirator.
Rating:
Summary: The Three V's
Review: Good fiction is all about voice. As a reader, I find a compelling voice, and I'm willing to follow it just about anywhere. The voices in Elizabeth Crane's striking and original debut story collection practically scream off the pages. This book is a pitch-perfect blend of neurosis, humor and pathos. Favorites include "The Archetype's Girlfriend," "Something Shiny," "Year-at-a-Glance," "Return From the Depot!" and "An Intervention." Anyone who thinks the short story is a dead art form would do well to pick this up, along with a copy of David Foster Wallace's Brief Interviews with Hideous Men.
Rating:
Summary: When The Reviewa Hates On The Playa
Review: Haven't we seen enough mediocre and shallow customer reviews by fat-thighed closet-readers of Glamour Magazine? How many mesomorphic spinsters equating their dime-store derision of The Bachelor with cogent criticism must we tolerate? "A best bet for the brain dead set?" Reads like a review out of TV Guide. Why don't you just call Crane a "big dummy?" Why don't you tell her that you know she is, but what are you? Why don't you just admit that the footnotes puzzled you, that you'd never seen footnotes before, that you just wish everyone would write like Judy Blume. Admit that, in your heart of hearts, you believe Crane stole the thoughts out of your head. Proclaim that it's you, after all, who is the walrus. Big and smelly. Admit that her stories made you weep, that, after reading them, you stayed up all night remembering something about yourself, from way back when you had a soul, and that it tore you up, this memory, continues to tear you up, and so you're angry at her, Elizabeth Crane, for making you feel human again. Googoogajoob.
Rating: 
Summary: When The Author Is Shallow and Mediocre
Review: Haven't we seen enough of these maddeningly mediocre and shallow girl books, on the level of The Bachelor and Survivor? The writing is about the same as you'd see in an article on how to get thin thighs in Glamour. A best bet for the brain dead set.
Rating:
Summary: Utterly Satisfying
Review: Having heard this author read one of these stories,"Return from the Depot!" about a mother's return from the dead and subsequent celebrity, I assumed this was among her strongest in this collection. Well, having ingested the entire collection in one sitting, I can say that while the story was a good representative of her sensibilities and talent, the whole of the collection exceeds the sum of the parts, each story illuminating the others while maintaining its distinct place in the cosmos of the author's worldview. Crane treads the familiar hip-sensitive female territory of Lucinda Rosenfeld and Elissa Schappel: grief and longing, laced with humor and hope over such commonplace heartbreaks as dead parents, bad boyfriends, unfortunate lifestyle choices. Yet in several stories she throws a curve reminiscent of a softer edged Aimee Bender, a fairy-dusting of magical realism, putting the pain in perspective, reminding us that with imagination wonderful things are possible, horrible things endurable, and transformation is just a dream away.
Rating:
Summary: Great
Review: I like smart, funny women, and though the women in this book are sometimes smarter than they are funny I liked them, too.
It's a form of "chick lit," I suppose, but at least one of Elizabeth Cranes' characters seems to realize (if not really accept) that although her experiences may be unique, her feelings are universal. And you will smile in recognition as she says that she really doesn't want them to be. And like I said, I love her sentences.
This is the kind of collection that makes you want to read more; though as another reviewer pointed out the women in each of the stories have many similarities. She might as well have just given them all the same name and called it a novel.
Hey! And I just found out from reading an article in Book Magazine that Crane and I share a favorite movie, Broadcast News. I love when that kind of thing happens--when you find connections between two things you love.
Rating:
Summary: I want to kiss this woman's sentences
Review: I like smart, funny women, and though the women in this book are sometimes smarter than they are funny I liked them, too.
It's a form of "chick lit," I suppose, but at least one of Elizabeth Cranes' characters seems to realize (if not really accept) that although her experiences may be unique, her feelings are universal. And you will smile in recognition as she says that she really doesn't want them to be. And like I said, I love her sentences.
This is the kind of collection that makes you want to read more; though as another reviewer pointed out the women in each of the stories have many similarities. She might as well have just given them all the same name and called it a novel.
Rating:
Summary: I want to kiss this woman's sentences
Review: I like smart, funny women, and though the women in this book are sometimes smarter than they are funny I liked them, too.
It's a form of "chick lit," I suppose, but at least one of Elizabeth Cranes' characters seems to realize (if not really accept) that although her experiences may be unique, her feelings are universal. And you will smile in recognition as she says that she really doesn't want them to be. And like I said, I love her sentences.
This is the kind of collection that makes you want to read more; though as another reviewer pointed out the women in each of the stories have many similarities. She might as well have just given them all the same name and called it a novel.
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