Customer Reviews

All This Heavenly Glory

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Though Elizabeth Crane's All This Heavenly Glory is billed as a collection of stories, after just a few, I shifted into novel mode, which was easy to do, seeing as the whole collection is about one character viewed in many snapshots from the age of 6 to 40, Charlotte Anne Byers. Those who who have read Crane before will be familiar with her rambunctious, elbows-flailing prose, in which the dependent clauses become so laden that they at times break free into outlines and lists. The effect of this stylistic departure from standard convention is, miraculously, not at all gimmicky, because a) Crane manages to keep those piled up words from toppling over, and b) it is in keeping with the persona of the character that she has created to inhabit this book. Because All This Heavenly Glory, necessarily, touches upon many trials and tribulations of girlhood and womanhood, it seems likely that it will have the "chick lit" moniker attached to it at some point. So be it. But what this book really is is an unflinching character study of a complicated person. Charlotte Anne is raised on the Upper West Side, comes of age in the 1970s in a family branched by divorce and remarriage, and endures a decade of being lost in her 20's - both geographically and spiritually. She is both foolish and clever, endearing and infuriating, hopelessly falling apart and really good at "having it together." Not all at the same time, of course. Crane tells Byers' story episodically, filled with details and discursions, and though the book threatens to come apart under the pressure of Crane's furiously frantic stylings, she manages to pull together an overarching narrative that is telling and poignant, less - and therefore more meaningful - than the sum of its frenetic parts.

I enjoyed reading Crane's When the Messenger Is Hot and had looked forward to reading another one of her short-story collections. All this Heavenly Glory is somewhat different from When the Messenger Is Hot. This is a collection of connected stories that center on a female character and what she becomes from being a spunky young girl to being quite a cynical adult. The stories are more vignettes based on the one heroine than anything else, but they make great stand-alone tales of their own. This sort of reminds me of Melissa Banks's The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing, only that Crane's style is far more insightful and enlightening than the stuff Banks wrote in her collection. Anyway, my favorite vignettes here are "Howard the Filmmaker," "Notre Monde," "Brooklyn," "Guidelines," and "Football." Even though I agree with the reviewers who consider this book to be "chick-lit," I feel this collection has more depth and spunk than many of the flimsy, superficial stories found in the aforementioned books. I love chick-lit, but there are so many out there that you can no longer find the special ones from the run-of-the-mills. All this Heavenly Glory, however, is definitely one special find and I cannot recommend this book enough. I take away one star because I admit I had expected a collection of stand-alone stories and was somewhat disappointed when I discovered that it was not one. However, the book itself is great.

Reading the eighteen stories that make up this delightful novel is a little like going through a frenetic friend's box of family photos. The pictures are not in order and each one triggers another trip down memory lane, with many detours and evoking buried emotions. These include tales of her wanderlust that draws her back and forth across the country as she tries to find her place, her failed attempts to "win an Oscar in any category," the fickle and faithful friendships, and her many encounters with men, including the pervert porn producer and the forty-something rock star with "issues."

Author Elizabeth Crane, as she notes about one of her characters, "has a keen sense of observation with regard to human nature." In addition, she has a way with words that keeps the reader engaged as she relates stories in the life of Charlotte Anne Byers from age six to age forty. The child's vignettes begin when the precocious little bundle of energy is eight years old, riding the bus alone in New York City to perform in the children's chorus of the New York Opera. Even at her prepubescent age, Charlotte's mind is occupied by thoughts of love for Dante DiMedici, an older man of fifteen who is still "gender uncertain." Later she develops stage fright that pretty much ends her operatic career, but her misadventures with men go on and on.

The adult Charlotte's stories begin with her writing a lengthy personal ad...about seven pages long. In it she recalls a "brief but compellingly unfortunate prior experience in which one respondent who described himself as a handsome and well-dressed forty-year-old in fact could only be compared to Deputy Dog, if D. Dog had a comb-over and wore a soiled t-shirt with pleated pants and was closer to sixty and not a cartoon."

One of many memorable chapters is where Charlotte outlines the things that she loves about her mom, who has just been diagnosed with cancer. Mom was not your typical cookie baker but "once she reupholstered Charlotte's queen-size sleeper sofa with white fabric even though it's so impractical and she never threw anything away that Charlotte might possibly have wanted or needed." But I think my favorite was the last chapter, which contains every happy-ending cliché you can think of and then some --- a must for us diehard romantics.

At times Crane's prose will seem poignant, at others pointless, depending on your perspective at the moment, and her lengthy, mind-numbing sentences can cause your eyes to glaze over if you don't stay alert. But this series of short stories written in her unique, breathless style is sure to have you nodding and smiling throughout.

--- Reviewed by Maggie Harding, a substance abuse counselor in Phoenix, AZ who wanted to be Brenda Starr before life intervened. She reviews for www.faithfulreader.com and www.womenonwriting.com. To contact Maggie, e-mail Magster2@cox.net.

OK, full disclosure: I am a college friend of the author and might be a touch bias but I ADORED this book. Crane writes the things we think about the world around us but aren't so clever at putting into words. Yes, the sentences can be long but I don't find it disjointed. I find it adorable and effective. Charlotte Ann makes life at all ages fascinating and complicated and just plain old funny. Like, laugh at loud funny. It is a delightful read. And for those of you that say you aren't huge short story fans, this does kind of read like a novel. Would be a great book club selection!

I don't understand the reviews that refer to "Heavenly Glory" as short stories. It's a novel. It has a through-line which may take detours, but that's half the fun of this book. It jumps back and forth chronologically, sort of burning the candles at both ends.
There are times when i was reading this book, that i literally had to scoop my jaw up off the ground. It's an incredibly special and fresh voice describing....well, probably you. It's a cathartic experience, to be sure, to read because it is so nuanced and true that you will probably be looking over your shoulder to make sure Elizabeth Crane isn't spying on you.
I might actually recommend reading this book before When the Messenger is Hot. The two books carry similar themes, and you can definitely see where moments from Messenger get flushed out into fuller vignettes in Glory.

I absolutely loved this book. I picked it up completely at random in a bookstore, and finished it in one day, barely able to put it down. I was a bit surprised when the stylistic lack of punctuation and breathless narrative continued past the story Ad (I thought it was simply an introductory approach!), and although it did take a bit of getting used to, I was drawn in by it. Perhaps this is because my biggest weakness in writing during college was, in fact, run-on sentences!
Elizabeth Crane forced me to reassess my opinion of short stories, and I found myself searching online for the list of books she recommended at the end of All This Heavenly Glory- despite a lifelong avoidance of said genre. I didn't in truth realize that All This Heavenly Glory was a collection of short stories, as the entire book focuses on the main character. The main concept that breaks the narrative into short, non-sequential "stories" is that it has no chronological order or structure, and presents the character in brief snap-shots of her life.
It was a beautifully rendered, occasionally heart-breaking, but mostly hilarious read.

Our book club picked this; we are a group of professionals with a median age of ~45. None of us liked it. Too many run on sentences, too many thoughts and ideas falling all over the place. We decided maybe someone in their early 20's who's grown up on the computer might like this. It read like an IM or email.

I found myself rushing through this just to get done with it. It was boring to me. I would have rather her concentrate on one section of her life. I understand what the author was trying to do, but to me, it didn't turn out that great.

When I read Crane's When the Messenger Is Hot, I said here on Amazon: I want to kiss this woman's sentences. I'm upgrading that now. These linked stories of the life of a woman named Charlotte Anne (probably not a reference to the Julian Cope song) at all ages could be called a non-sequential novel.

But, whatever you call them; it is extremely enjoyable following her bubble-like thought patterns.

Come to think of it, I just realized that in the same review of Messenger I said:

"...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."

I was onto something.

The voice of the main character here is so honest, and honestly felt, that it would be a great one-woman show for an actress. Or maybe two, one to play Charlotte as a grown-up; one as a child.

When I first started reading this, I was unsure of what to make of it. The first chapter is an assault of descriptive words that appear to be a personal ad of sorts. The next chapter is told in the present tense and involves a young girl...so I figured it was a collection of short stories. Wrong again.

What "All this Heavenly Glory" is, is a novel told between the alternating perspectives of a young child and a young woman version of the same character, Charlotte Anne Byers. Charlotte Anne is one of the most endearing characters I've come across in modern day literature; a woman that any reader will connect with and see themselves in. She's smart, funny, insecure and sarcastic..and I adored her.

The book is a quick read..and details the major events in Charlotte Anne's life--from her mother's battle with cancer, to her discovering all there was to learn about the opposite sex. From alcoholism to Hollywood. From New York to Chicago, the book has it all. It's a cute story..I hate the word cute and usually find its usage condescending in some way or other, but in the case of this novel, it works. The story is cute, the main character is real and honest, and the book is very well written. I sincerely enjoyed it.