Here’s Your Hat, What’s Your Hurry by Elizabeth McCracken
I’m writing short stories just now and have been reading some as well to try and give me some inspiration. So I thought it would be appropriate this week to recommend a book of short stories, and I’ve chosen one of my favourites – Here’s Your Hat, What’s Your Hurry by Elizabeth McCracken.
This is a book of beautiful stories; I read them and it makes me want to work harder at my own writing while, at the same time, there’s a voice in my head telling me that I’m a million miles away from being that good. There are nine stories in the collection, and the opening lines of every story immediately hooks you so that it’s not merely a case of wanting to read on – you have to! This is the beginning of the first story, It’s Bad Luck To Die.
‘Maybe you wonder how a Jewish girl from Des Moines got Jesus Christ tattooed on her three times: ascending on one thigh, crucified on the other, and conducting a miniature apocalypse beneath the right shoulder. It wasn’t religion that put them there; it was Tiny, my husband.’
I bought this book when it came out in 1993. I love the cover, and I was impressed and depressed at the same time when I found out Elizabeth McCracken was born the same year as me – 1966 – and she was already a published author. But it did inspire to get a move on with my own writing and just 17 years later, I finally got a novel published!
Here’s Your Hat, What’s Your Hurry is a book that I have read a few times over the past few years. The great thing about short story collections is that you can dip in and out of them whenever you feel like it and I can never understand why they’re not more popular; I like reading them if I’m in between books or I’m either not in the mood for tackling a novel, or just tired at night and want to read something that is self-contained.
The stories in Here’s Your Hat, What’s Your Hurry are strange and captivating and funny and sad, and just about everything you’d want from a book. You should read them.
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