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A review by savaging
Thunderstruck & Other Stories by Elizabeth McCracken
5.0
McCracken wants to write about loss, and she wants to throw it on the table with a heavy thunk. Like:
"Whatever you have lost there are more of, just not yours."
Or:
"A dead person is lost property. [ . . .] You can’t hear those same fingers on a computer keyboard or feel them on your shoulder at a time you need them. People take their hands with them, no matter where they go."
And the woman who sings like a saw, and the three-legged dogs, and the unwitting subject of a documentary against sleezeball economists. Maybe my favorite story was the first one, "Something Amazing," about a ghost and her mother:
"The soul is liquid, and slow to evaporate. The body’s a bucket and liable to slosh. Grieving, haunted, heartbroken, obsessed: your friends will tell you to cheer up. What they really mean is dry up. But it isn’t a matter of will. Only time and light will do the job."
"Whatever you have lost there are more of, just not yours."
Or:
"A dead person is lost property. [ . . .] You can’t hear those same fingers on a computer keyboard or feel them on your shoulder at a time you need them. People take their hands with them, no matter where they go."
And the woman who sings like a saw, and the three-legged dogs, and the unwitting subject of a documentary against sleezeball economists. Maybe my favorite story was the first one, "Something Amazing," about a ghost and her mother:
"The soul is liquid, and slow to evaporate. The body’s a bucket and liable to slosh. Grieving, haunted, heartbroken, obsessed: your friends will tell you to cheer up. What they really mean is dry up. But it isn’t a matter of will. Only time and light will do the job."