From Elizabeth McCracken, author of the beloved novel The Giant's House—finalist for the National Book Award—comes a beautiful new story collection, her first in twenty years. Laced with humor, empathy, and magical descriptive powers, these nine vibrant stories navigate the fragile space between love and loneliness.
In "Property", a young scholar, grieving the sudden death of his wife, decides to refurbish a rental house by removing his landlord's possessions. In "Peter Elroy: A Documentary by Ian Casey", the household of a successful filmmaker is visited years later by his famous first subject, whose trust he betrayed. In "The Lost & Found Department of Greater Boston", the manager of a grocery store becomes fixated on the famous case of a missing local woman. And in "Thunderstruck", a family makes a quixotic decision to flee to Paris for a summer, only to find their lives altered in an unimaginable way by their teenage daughter's risky behavior.
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“Elizabeth McCracken knows how loss can melt reality, forever altering a
person’s sense of time…In her new collection, McCracken gives
brilliantly splintered life to just that kind of story…The fact
that there is nothing depressing about the ubiquity of accident and
disaster in Thunderstruck & Other Stories is a powerful
testament to the scratchy humor and warm intelligence of McCracken’s
writing…[A] restorative,
unforgettable collection.”
—
New York Times Book Review