Tom Lynch

Charlotte Anne Byers is skeptical of you.

Local author Elizabeth Crane's new heroine, stretched through her new book of shorts titled "All This Heavenly Glory," is funny, irresponsible, interrogative, a Chicago transplant, a bit punch-drunk, hopeless with love, often charmingly optimistic and surviving on pop-culture references. The book is told in both first- and third-person and alternates between tenses--flashbacks to childhood told in present and flash-forwards to adulthood told in past. "I tried to make the childhood stories in the present tense and the future in the past," says Crane. "Childhood for so many people is so immediate, people are really nostalgic about things about childhood. And sometimes it's things that really aren't that great. I know a lot of people, myself included, who have tried to recreate little bits of childhood on, like, eBay. It's just sort of easy to relate to. You never get over it."

While Crane's first collection of stories, 2003's "When the Messenger Is Hot," succeeded because of Crane's graceful humor and subtle quirkiness, the new book stirs in some tragedy for its heroine, a few unexpected roadblocks. "I think that has a lot to with my general outlook," Crane says. "I just think [comedy and tragedy] go hand in hand. It's so hard for me to explain the way I view the world. It's just not as simple as `this is terrible and this is wonderful.'"

Crane admits that much of the new book draws from her own life. "The childhood stories to a great extent are autobiographical. It would be silly for me to say they weren't," she says. "Primarily I write fiction because it's just easier and more fun--blow things out, make stuff up. Exaggerating is a big thing that I do. Some of the real people, like family members and friends--everyone's been wonderful about it." Anyone not so wonderful? "I would say that maybe there are some ex-boyfriends that might be a little less pleased. But too bad."

"All This Heavenly Glory" was released this week.

(2005-03-22)

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