By Elizabeth Crane, Little, Brown and Company, 2005
All This Heavenly Glory
By Elizabeth Crane, Little, Brown and Company, 2005
Elizabeth Crane doesn’t think she’s written a novel in All This Heavenly Glory, but rather a collection of interrelated stories about a single character. There’s nothing new in that; the stories-as-novel/novel-as-stories form is currently in vogue, and what is usually cast as an edgy new departure from traditional narrative structure more often feels like a weak excuse for the author’s inability to craft a novel-length plot. That criticism is too harsh, however, to apply to Crane’s novel - for it is certainly a novel, even if it is a plot-light one - because the book’s consistency of tone and depth of characterization make it more coherent than any collection could be. As individual stories, in fact, the chapters are less than remarkable; only as components of a larger whole do the pieces function to their full potential.
The book’s central character - indeed, the only fully realized character - is Charlotte Anne Byers, a New Yorker eventually transplanted to Chicago who spends most of her life coming to terms with the legacy of having been raised in a barely functional family, all the while coping with wildly fluctuating self-esteem and searching for romantic love. The book’s chapters alternate between tales of the child Charlotte and the adult Charlotte, skipping back and forth between two roughly parallel chronological tracks.
Crane’s prose style is the aspect of the novel that is certain to garner the most attention. Breathless, gargantuan sentences ramble on and on: phrases, clauses, entire narrative diversions inserting themselves into the middle of other clauses and ideas; endless nests of parenthetical notions stretching from here to eternity. Her writing can be exasperating, the digressions confusing and disruptive to the flow of the text, but at least the manic energy of Crane’s voice never feels like a contrivance as it often does in the hands of, say, David Foster Wallace or Dave Eggers. Crane’s style is true to her character - spontaneous and undisciplined -and if it’s merely a coincidence that Crane’s uninhibited approach to putting words on paper happens to work so well in writing about Charlotte Anne, so be it.
It’s more difficult to defend Charlotte as a character. She is immature, narcissistic and irritatingly focused on finding a man, a quest made supremely difficult by the fact that her neuroses keep her from embarking on a healthy relationship or, if she manages to get one started, keeping it going. The childhood stories in particular take up a familiar drone, as they present us with yet another tunnel-visioned look at the young people of NYC; New York kids, by now and for a long time, have held the honor of being possibly the most overexposed creatures on the planet. Yet, Charlotte’s shortcomings are what give the book its snap. Sure, she has flaws galore, but she’s basically a good person, and one can’t help feeling a heap of affection for her. That the book is, apparently, largely a fictionalized autobiography makes Crane’s candor and ruthless dissection of her character all the more compelling.
Charlotte’s real problems lie behind a veneer of decoy problems, and the complaints that go mostly unspoken save her from being just another whiny urbanite. She wants to identify her central difficulty as her failure to sustain a romantic relationship, and her self-image is put forth as the culprit that scares the men away. She is alternately arrogant (she thinks she’s beautiful) and self-loathing (she becomes convinced that she is “unlovable) and she stumbles through a seemingly endless series of bad encounters with the opposite sex. But there are reasons - real, non-annoying reasons - behind Charlotte’s emotional unavailability: her beloved mother was difficult and demanding and died young; after her parents divorced, her father moved far, far away (to Iowa); Charlotte spent her young adulthood battling alcoholism; and despite her essentially sweet nature, Charlotte was forced to grow up in NYC, where emotional unavailability is de rigueur. Even if Charlotte doesn’t realize that her challenges go deeper than not being able to find a boyfriend, we do.
Charlotte’s story ends gently and happily, and even if her biographical resolution is sentimental, it doesn’t seem overly so. Perhaps that’s because Charlotte’s happiness feels authentic and credible (and perhaps that’s because it’s drawn from Crane’s own life), or perhaps it’s because the third-to-last chapter introduces 9/11 as a fateful catalyst that could, in fact, change anyone’s life.
The book’s final chapter is, unfortunately, weak. It is obvious, distastefully ironic, out of place, and unnecessary. That final piece is, however, easy to ignore, leaving Charlotte’s story neatly wrapped up and All This Heavenly Glory a successful novel - yes, novel - about a complex and lovable character.
Copyright 2005 Ad Media Inc.