cover image Here's Your Hat, What's Your Hurry

Here's Your Hat, What's Your Hurry

Elizabeth McCracken, Elizabeth McCraken. Random House (NY), $20 (210pp) ISBN 978-0-679-40026-4

McCracken repeatedly creates characters who crave emotional shelter in this debut collection of nine stories. At times her oddball individuals seem contrived, as in the listless ``Some Have Entertained Angels, Unaware,'' narrated by a motherless girl whose father allows an ever-shifting cast of eccentrics to take up residence in his spacious, run-down home. Similarly, ``What We Know About the Lost Aztec Children'' features an armless woman--a former sideshow attraction--who welcomes a lonely friend from the circus into her family's suburban home. Sometimes though, such conscious attempts to blend perversity and sentimentality pay off: In ``It's Bad Luck to Die,'' a woman marries a tattooist three decades her senior and shows her love by becoming a canvas for his most extravagant work. Another highlight is the wistful title tale, whose nomadic protagonist makes a life of being an uninvited, potentially unwanted guest by introducing herself to unwary families as their long-lost Aunt Helen Beck (hell and back?). Ultimately, Here's Your Hat is a melancholy book, filled with dispossessed, acquiescent characters incapable of forging permanent bonds with those who offer refuge. (June)