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New Fiction

 Some of Elizabeth McCracken's new material ("The Souvenir Museum") went over my head.....but how do you beat this opener?

"Who died and made you boss," Sadie asked Jack, and he answered, "Nobody. Everybody. How do you make somebody boss when you're dead, anyhow?"

Not *everybody* was dead, just a handful of significant people. Sadie's parents; Jack's sister Fiona; most recently, Jack's nephew, blond Thomas of the passions, who'd gone to study piano in Poland and had stepped off a building at half past ten in the morning. He was twenty-seven.....

I really like the first line, which must strike a chord with anyone who is married. Jack could try to understand why Sadie is frustrated, but instead he becomes just as juvenile as she is. "How do you make somebody boss when you're dead, anyhow?"

I also like the way that suicide is handled: "He'd gone to study piano in Poland and had stepped off a building at half past ten...." Everything in this sentence is jarring: "half past ten," "stepped off a building," and the way the second half of the thought seems to come out of left field....This is form matching content.

McCracken will be a big name when the 2021 "best of" lists are published.
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