Here's Your Hat, What's Your Hurry

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)