In All This Heavenly Glory, Elizabeth Crane's second collection of interconnected stories, readers are taken on an amusing, if slightly disjointed journey through the life of Charlotte Anne Byers, a spunky six-year-old who grows into a cynical, yet cautiously optimistic adult. Those who enjoyed Crane's debut, When the Messenger Is Hot, will surely recognize and appreciate her sharp-witted humor and emotional honesty, but new readers may be put off by her somewhat rambling writing style.
When we first meet Charlotte Anne, she is in the middle of penning a seven-page personal ad that is actually one long sentence, complete with tons of semi-colons and a few alphabetical lists thrown in for good measure. The ad itself is quite hilarious, it begins with a physical description and ends with a hilarious tribute to Owen Wilson; however, the lack of sentence structure may begin to confuse readers after about two pages. This first story is a template for much of what follows in the...
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