All This Heavenly Glory

by Elizabeth Crane

Book Overview

A glittering book from the author hailed by the Chicago Tribune as "unique, intriguing, and often hilarious."

Here are the events that make up a life: a junior high school fashion crisis, a best friend's betrayal, substance abuse, recovery, finding a satisfying career, dating fiascos, the perfect relationship, the illness and slow death of a parent. This is the life of Charlotte Anne Byers, told by Elizabeth Crane, whose debut,...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B000OV16Q2
• ISBN13: 9780316014212
• Release Date: June 2006
• Publisher: Back Bay Books
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.9" x 8.1"

Customer Reviews

it's a novel!

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 am a friend of the authors but....

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!

Glorious

I've brought my copy of 'When the Messenger is Hot' to seven different countries with me because I think it's so amazing, so it's no surprise that I like Crane's new collection. Actually, though, the things I like about the two books are quite different. 'Glory' is a darker, denser, compilation that deals more with god, love, and destiny than WTMIS. In 'Glory' Crane explores these themes in her signature run-on sentence, list-laden style that makes her complex understandings of the world easy to read and relate to. Crane leads us through the life of Charlotte Anne Byers, sometimes recapitulating, skipping ahead or back until we've observed her enough that after we've put the book down we continue to think the way Charlotte Anne does. Her point of view leaves a permanent mark on us. Crane has done what she writes Charlotte Anne has always wanted to do, "It was just my intent to show people as they really are."

Rambunctious, elbows-flailing prose

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.