An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination by Elizabeth McCracken

This slim memoir of the births of fiction writer McCracken's stillborn first child and her healthy second child is moving and poignant and agonizing for all the reasons you would expect when a horrific subject and a beautiful subject meet a skilled and subtle writer. But through all the tears (mine not hers) I couldn't help but read it as an insight into the writing life of the novelist who wrote one of my personal favorites, The Giant's House. What kept making my jaw hang were all the pages that McCracken referenced writing that never saw the light of the printing press. She described a novel she gave up on, a memoir of pregnancy (pre-stillbirth) she gave up on...literally hundreds of pages, years of effort... Now I'm well accustomed to the idea of writers having first manuscripts that never got published (and never should) pre-success but it was a bit disspiriting and a bit reassuring to realize that writers also have projects that get drawered post-success. So in part I liked this book for the same reason that I like Ann Patchett's memoir Truth and Beauty (which lots of people criticize because they see it as exploitive of its subject, her friendship with the (deceased) writer Lucy Grealy)... because on the margins it's a book about being a woman writer and how that fits into a larger life.

The Giant's House by Elizabeth McCracken

This is a recent favorite of mine. A good example of how voice can create character. The exposition on the narrator is minimal -- but McCracken uses her sarcasm blended with moments of great vulnerability as well as her work identity--librarian--and all that we associate with that--to create a very funny, very sad narrator.

Structurally it's a wonderful model for beginning novelists. Narrator has a project --take care of giant boy -- and McCracken takes a chronological approach, but instead of using events as her main plot points, she brings in (and then takes out) new characters. Each new character acts upon the main protagonists (librarian and giant) and then exits for the rest of the novel (though not to be entirely forgotten). It's a useful technique for dealing with a large cast of secondary characters.