A glittering book from the author hailed by the Chicago Tribune as "unique, intriguing, and often hilarious." Here are the events that make up a life: a junior high school fashion crisis, a best friend's betrayal, substance abuse, recovery, finding a satisfying career, dating fiascos, the perfect relationship, the illness and slow death of a parent. This is the life of Charlotte Anne Byers, told by Elizabeth Crane, whose debut, When the Messenger Is Hot, has been praised across the country for its humor and grace. From the time she moved to New York as a young girl, desperate to tame her ridiculed southern accent, Charlotte Anne Byers has struggled to fit in-even while her strong will makes her clash with everything and everyone around her. With her mother pursuing a career as an opera singer and her father returning to Iowa, Charlotte is caught in the divide between her parents' dreams. She finds a touchstone in Jenna, a friend who will be by Charlotte's side through the death of her mother, several failed career moves, even more failed romances, a detour into alcoholism, and finding true love. In her lifetime Charlotte finds hope and disappointment mingled with faith and desperation, laughter on the heels of weeping, and success assuaging the pain of the most embarrassing failures-her path both all her own and instantly familiar. All This Heavenly Glory confirms Elizabeth Crane's talents as the writer the San Francisco Chronicle called "hilariously off kilter and utterly refreshing." With whimsy, skepticism, and undaunted emotional frankness, she paints a dazzling portrait of one woman's unique desires and heartbreaks.
Release date:
September 9, 2009
Publisher:
Back Bay Books
Print pages:
247
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SWF, ABOVE AVERAGE on a really good day, on a bad day still fairly cute but you might want to mention that her hair doesn’t look too big before
she has to ask, frequently compared to a certain movie star (who shall remain nameless, a) in case you don’t think she resembles
the star, b) in case you don’t find the star especially beautiful, and also C) because every time someone says they look like
someone in a personal ad it’s more like those separated-at-birth things where the allegedly more attractive person suddenly
looks distorted and creepy, like Winona Ryder looks eerily like Vincent Price and you can never really see her again in the
same way, or if it’s a guy who’s comparing himself to let’s say Ed Harris when in fact he looks more like Curly), is not even
remotely overweight but has finally and recently and very reluctantly joined a gym due only to her doctor mentioning something
about crumbling bones, stares with open-jawed fascination when the guy at the front desk says Enjoy your workout, thinks better of her inclination to start a long conversation with the front-desk guy about how that’s really possible,
feels as though no one wants to just come out and say working out is just not fun (excluding the random stand-up comic who
will make ironic use of the word work), and so she will be the one to say that it is not only not fun but that sometimes it
actually hurts, that if there’s some point at which one progresses past the hurt, she hasn’t reached it, although she does
love to walk and would consider playing volleyball if a rare group of non-competitive volleyball players inclined toward reassuring
commentary after any errors or mishaps invited her to play, enjoys tossing a Frisbee, which she’s only ever done about twice
but would like to do again, believes the Frisbee crowd is a much more tolerant type of crowd, albeit a generally sandal-wearing
bloc (sandal-wearing being a singly character-revealing quality, far and away less tolerable than something as potentially
life-removing and unpleasant to be around as let’s say smoking [which more people seem to be inclined to consider giving up],
insofar as the desire to display one’s feet publicly is always either present or not, and on the subject it seems like Chicago
as a city is much more tolerant of and replete with sandal-wearers, unlike New York, where a healthy shame for such things
is more widely practiced, plus yuck, just the idea of walking around any major city with your feet exposed to the world seems
like an incomprehensible risk, which, she realizes, doesn’t up her odds of meeting the perfect non-sandal-wearing man, nevertheless
this is probably the only thing she’d ever actively attempt to change about a person, and she can make a really good and lengthy
case, and if you really love her you’ll just give in to this one thing), loves to ride a bike in places without streets (e.g.,
Fire Island, which for most people is only a summer community but which she believes ought to serve as a model for cities
nationwide), listens to NPR but doesn’t suggest you quiz her on Dostoyevsky or anything, comes from a musical/academic family,
has been writing since shortly after her long-term memory begins (but has only recently profited from this endeavor due to
a current lull in her twenty-five-year run of self-loathing), raised in Manhattan, relocated to Chicago in favor of affordable
housing with functioning/sunlight-bearing windows, work history including but not limited to opera singing, Wendy’s, network
news, soap-opera extra, waitressing, talent management, private tutor, personal assistant/launderer to star of a low-rated
situation comedy, rubber stamp sales, preschool teaching, depressing and mind-screwingly prolonged periods of unemployment
scattered in there leading as you might imagine to even longer periods of unemployment, and numerous on-set coffeefetching-type
jobs ultimately leading to filmmaking; trained in several areas, including typing, bartending, and stand-up comedy (dropping
out after being informed that she was not funny), holds a bachelor’s degree in Radio and TV, you read that right (on the fourand-a-half-year plan due to indecision/alcohol abuse), enjoys curtain sewing, quilting, flower growing, card
making, knitting, journal writing (but refuses under any circumstances to succumb to the now-popular usage of journal as a verb, might mention that there are any number of etymological changes she’s seen in her lifetime that she finds exasperating
that often involve changing nouns into verbs), still loves movies but can only name a sorry few in recent years that have
been at all life-changing or even afternoon-changing (which is maybe unreasonable, maybe she should try harder to believe
she could ever meet an adorable tycoon in a chat room or that she might pick up someone remotely Richard Gere—looking if she
endeavored into prostitution) but then again finds the lack of life-changing movies to be weirdly inspiring insofar as it
has created a drive to make her own life-or-afternoon-changing movies for other people, plus also has the sense that in Chicago
if you go to a movie alone and happen to run into someone, the response is likely to be a well-meaning but loneliness-implying
I’d have gone with you as opposed to the implicit understanding of New Yorkers for the need to be separate from the presence
of others (given that others are so frequently and intrusively present), leading to a solemn nod at most; unashamedly loves
a broad range of chick singers (okay, some shame), excluding only country and/or any sort of post—Aretha Franklin melisma,
believes in god but would have to double the length of this ad to explain what it is she does and doesn’t believe, encompassing
all god-related doubts, questions, and fears, after extensive research determined that it is better for everyone involved
if she doesn’t drink (coming to this conclusion after one of the more prolonged periods of unemployment in which beer and
sofa became her primary fields of interest, coupled with a tendency to find boyfriends who seemed considerably more appealing
under the influence of large quantities of beer, unable to give up beer by sheer force of will, joined a twelve-step program
that not only helped her with the beer/sofa issue, subtracting beer/sofa from the equation actually helped her in bunches
of ways, such as she can actually go to a party now and not be completely terrified of saying something unbelievably stupid,
or being able to find meaningful work, or generally getting along in the world more comfortably without being in some state
of unconsciousness, although the etymology thing resurfaces again here because there is a tendency in twelve-step programs
to create words and phrases that don’t exist outside of twelve-step programs, e.g., uncomfortability or family of origin or rage as a verb or phrases like my last drunk meaning not the last drunk person they dated [or possibly owned?] but to mean the last time they drank and maybe those two
extra words are a time consideration? which wouldn’t explain the extra four syllables in uncomfortability when one could simply use the less wieldy discomfort, except when considering that alcoholics seem to like having a word that indicates a greater discomfort than non-alcoholic
discomfort), has some lingering driving issues (e.g., does not enjoy passengers/left turns/the expressway/snow/rain/dew) but
drives anyway since the closest el stop is a mile away and the buses are intolerably slow (plus the space invasions are too
numerous to even list, there’s a lot of food on the bus, e.g., buttered corn on a stick is popular, which really you just
don’t want to get too close to); defects of character include but are not necessarily limited to excessive fascination with
self, not to be confused with selfishness or vanity, vanity, a tendency to shout when things don’t go her way (more often
than not, in the privacy of her own home), e.g., printers jamming repeatedly or not being able to reach an actual operator
after punching numbers into ComEd’s automated voice system repeatedly or pretty much anything that happens repeatedly, unsuccessful
repetition of any kind has resulted in shouting, occasionally regarded by others as delusional (at least with regard to who
she thinks will date her, whether they’re twenty-five or possibly a movie star), has an obsession with buying three books
for every one read, a tendency to believe that large numbers of candles/office supplies/antique clocks/valentines/photos/toys
will result in some sort of self-improvement, and a serious television addiction (more accurately, the television is usually
on if she is in any way awake, whether or not it’s being paid attention to, however there is generally and simultaneously
a laptop in her lap, any one of the six books/magazines/journals she’s usually reading at one time in her lap, an art/textile/
bead/yarn-related project in her lap, dinner or a snack food somewhere near her lap, not nearly often enough is there anything
warm and lifelike in or near her lap, could easily be persuaded to turn off the television in order to fully participate if
pleasurable lap-oriented activity seemed imminent); in search of Owen Wilson for long-term relationship possibly involving
children and a simple but elegant ceremony in which she gets to wear some beautiful whitish possibly vintage dress, with a
gardenia in her hair, or some other little fragrant blossoms (and on which occasion she would certainly not subject her very
best girlfriends to wearing something hideous in any misguided attempt to offset her own glory), in which there are maybe
some little kids in velvet tossing rose petals down the aisle, in which they have a bonfire and a weenie roast on the beach
and a cake made of marshmallows, in which everyone goes swimming in their fancy clothes, in which friends come from far and
also from wide to celebrate their unprecedented great love, in which toasts are made in memory of her mom, in which she will
probably mess up her makeup walking down the aisle wishing her mom was there, in which her stepdad will say that she is there,
which she will understand but will prefer his meaning to be literal, that he would then say, No really she’s right there, and there she would be, on the bride’s side of the aisle, in a tasteful and timeless silk suit (she was always willing to spend money on any timeless garment as an investment) and expensive shoes (a concession to her daughter imploring her to treat herself to one really nice pair of neutral shoes
instead of forty pairs of identical shoes in every color from Payless), wiping her eves with a typically wrinkly embroidered
hanky from the bottom of her purse, but also whispering to her stepfather something like Finally! and making a face about
somebody’s tacky and not-at-all-timeless outfit, is figuring that if her mom doesn’t show up from the afterlife to attend
her simple but elegant wedding, she can’t imagine when she would come, unless she has kids right away, maybe then she would
come; not in search of an Owen Wilson “type,” not ISO anyone who looks, acts, sounds like, or does an impression of Owen Wilson,
in search of the actual Owen Wilson; feels that the problem with these ads is that there’s a valley between how people portray
themselves and how they actually are, between what they are looking for and what actually responds (has one brief but compellingly
unfortunate prior experience with personal ads in which one respondent who described himself as a handsome and well-dressed
forty-year-old in fact could only be compared to Deputy Dog, if D. Dog had a comb-over and wore a soiled t-shirt with pleated
pants and was closer to sixty and not a cartoon), that it seems like maybe people are not only not being truthful enough,
they’re not being specific enough and so has decided to try to set a precedent with regard to specificity, of course that
said, she’s unable to specify what O.W. should be like, since he’s already like whatever he’s like, and realizes that the
phrase seeks Owen Wilson is an unusual phrase to stumble across while reading the personal ads except imagine you’re Owen Wilson, and you’re reading
the personal ads, which is admittedly unlikely to begin with but imagine that someone who knows you, Owen Wilson, reads the
personal ads and bothers to read this kind of long one and then passes it on to you, and it’s maybe a little weird, still,
you read past the first few pages and get to the part where it says seeks Owen Wilson and not even seeks Owen Wilson type, imagine that, because it seems possible that you might be flattered, maybe you’d even feel luckier than usual that you were
Owen Wilson (in the same way that some larger group of guys might feel lucky that they were 25-45, attractive, and successful),
especially if there were any possibility that there were other days when you might feel that there were drawbacks to being
Owen Wilson, such as even having to incorporate the word paparazzi into your vocabulary and trying to say it with any kind of seriousness, or having to fire your former personal assistant
for napping in your bed in your pj’s while you were out, which was a particular bummer because you really thought of him as
a bud, or like if your brother got picked to be People’s Sexiest Man Alive but you didn’t, or worse, like if they were considering having Sexiest Brothers Alive but then for some
reason decided that your brother Luke by himself was the better choice, or constantly wondering if people were only interested
in you because you were Owen Wilson, which it should be made clear is not what’s happening here because if you were Owen Wilson
but you were any kind of a tool she would be as uninterested in getting involved as she would be with any other less-famous
tool; the hope is that O.W. will exhibit an inviting and exhilarating humanity but also maybe it would be good if they were
sort of equal, that maybe Owen Wilson also has some tolerable habits or defects of character, almost any manner of insecurity
is acceptable and almost welcome as it tends to make her feel more normal to hang around people who also let’s say have occasional
afternoon-ruining relapses into self-doubt or if it turns out he spends a little too much in the way of both time and products
trying to get his hair to look like that, that would be all right, but maybe it should also be said that it’s totally unacceptable
if the insecurities make the other person feel inferior in any way (see: the whole “tool” thing); while she absolutely believes
in the possibility that some non-actual Owen Wilson could amuse and entertain and hopefully arouse her interest just as much
as the actual Owen Wilson, she hasn’t met such a person thus far or she wouldn’t be placing an ad, especially one that potentially
portrays her as a stalker of any kind, which she is not, she would totally walk away from anyone Owen Wilson or non—O.W. who
wasn’t moved by her possibly certain-movie-star looks and slightly above-average, if cluttered, mind, that is to say she’s
as familiar with rejection as anyone and is generally not inclined to try to reverse any rejection-oriented decisions as she
understands that to be futile (having on occasion been in the position of rejecting and grateful not to have any stalking
situations inflicted upon her), in other words is willing to suffer the rejection but not willing to sit around anymore waiting
for any Owen Wilsons, real or otherwise, to come knocking on her door just out of the blue or something; realizes that a story
in the form of a personal ad potentially invites a variety of criticism, e.g., thinly veiled autobiography of previous work reaches unprecedented levels of self-consciousness, that sort of thing, also realizes that just because she realizes it doesn’t mean it still won’t happen, autobiography is
veiled at least insofar as the author of this personal ad is actually spoken for and therefore does not wish to mislead Owen
Wilson into thinking she is available while also not meaning to diminish his appeal in any way, supposes that her boyfriend
who admits to a crush on Drew Barrymore wouldn’t freak out if she admitted to finding Owen Wilson appealing given the likelihood
of either of them meeting and subsequently dating Drew Barrymore and Owen Wilson via the personal ads, although writing this
her mind is already going to the bad place wherein Owen Wilson reads the personal ad and shows it to Drew Barrymore, who somehow
finds out who the author’s boyfriend is and where he lives and then flies on her private jet to Chicago and they meet and
she jets the author’s boyfriend away and they have lobster and truffles in their water bed on the private jet and laugh about
leaving the SWF behind and Owen Wilson is already in a serious relationship and not even with Salma Hayek or whoever but with
like some over-hyped author she thinks is particularly bad; anyway, after that little digression the wrap-up becomes a bit
problematic in that you now know that this has a happy non—Owen Wilson ending, but that seems fitting under the circumstances.
CHARLOTTE ANNE BYERS, age eight, gets off the 104 at 63rd and Broadway at dusk and descends the cement stairs to the stage entrance of the New
York State Theater like she knows what she’s doing, which she does, but only marginally, and any appearance of deliberation
is only a lucky coincidence. Charlotte Anne does know where she’s going, but at this point, why is of no great concern. (Why
being ostensibly due to her employment but motivated by other things entirely, some of which she’s aware of and some of which
it only looks like she’s aware of.) Charlotte Anne Byers is in the children’s chorus in New York City Opera’s fall production
of La Bohime, for which she has been required to audition in spite of the fact that her mother is featured in the role of Musetta, the
saucy tart who dares to remove her shoe out of doors at a crowded cafe on the Left Bank of Paris. (Any speculation about her
mother’s typecasting can be put to rest, which is not to say that Charlotte Anne’s mother is or is not saucy and/or a tart,
but that unlike other theatrical fields of entertainment where one’s apparent individual qualities such as saucy tartness
might aid in their casting, in opera it helps to come to the table with some level of skill, and so if her mother were let’s
say of any formidable size, which she isn’t, but for the sake of making this clear, if she were, it would not prevent her
from being cast as a saucy tart if she could sing well enough, or possibly if she had modest talents, say if she had some
training and maybe sang out of tune occasionally [in spite of the training] but slept with the right person, which her mother
never does, sl. . .
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