You Must Be This Happy to Enter: Stories

by Elizabeth Crane

Whether breathlessly enthusiastic, serenely calm, or really concentrating right now on their personal zombie issues, Elizabeth Crane’s happy cast explores the complexities behind personal satisfaction.

Elizabeth Crane is the author of two previous story collections, When the Messenger is Hot and All This Heavenly Glory . Her work has also been featured in numerous publications, including Chicago Reader and The Believer , as well as several anthologies, including McSweeney’s Future Dictionary of America and The Best Underground Fiction . A winner of the Chicago Public Library’s 21st Century Award, Crane teaches creative writing at Northwestern’s School of Continuing Studies, The School of the Art Institute, and The University of Chicago. She lives in Chicago.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Humor, Pop Culture, Music, Literature, American

183 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 2008

About the author

Elizabeth Crane is the author of two novels We Only Know So Much (now a major motion picture) and The History of Great Things (Harper Perennial) and four collections of short stories: When the Messenger Is Hot and All This Heavenly Glory (Little, Brown) and You Must Be This Happy to Enter (Akashic Books), and Turf (Counterpoint). Her work has been adapted for the stage by Steppenwolf Theater and featured on NPR's Selected Shorts. She is a winner of the Chicago Public Library 21st Century Award.

Reviews

[Rory · Rating 2 out of 5]

oh my god! this book is so irritatingly cutesy-angsty-hipster-overly-everything! the first story features an exclamation mark after each sentence! how does this shit get published without the editors retching all over the manuscripts?!

sorry. i hope you didn't like it.

[Susannah · Rating 5 out of 5]

How hard is it to write stories about happy people? Hard. Crane took on the challenge with this book and did a fine and multitextured job. These stories are zany and sweet and funny. And I give Crane major props for continuing to define for herself what "story" can be, for refusing to squash her sensibility and style into any safe, prescribed form.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

As another reviewer here said, given this title of this book, you may be afraid that this book drips with so much irony that it will slip out of your hands as you read it. Don't be. Irony is there at times, but it's applied with a light hand, and Crane is about as funny and surefooted a writer as you'll find, without any of the arch, forced style that infects a lot of short story writers of her generation. And best of all, I'm damned if these stories don't actually give me some hope.

[Jasmine · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is the Anti-The Littlest Hitler. It is full of absurdly happy people telling extremely weird stories, and pretending that they are happy stories. In fact the main difference between the two books occurs in pretense. Is the person pretending to be a good happy person or are they a miserable person who isn't paying any particular amount of attention.

I fell in love with this book within the first page. It was like Liz Prince. Love at first sight. Not to mention the doll on the cover.

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[Pia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brave and funny meditations that start out with an engaging premise, a brilliant set up, and then plumb the depths, worries and hopes of the human heart.

[Andrea Janov · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had so much fun reading this collection. Crane's bizarrely fun imagination and her engaging voice pair so well to bring you into these essays/stories.

[Patrick · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think they front-loaded this Chicago native's collection with the really good stories, the rest are all kind of average. "My Life is Awesome! And Great!" only uses exclamation points and question marks to end sentences, another is about a woman from my hometown of Lombard, Il who is turned into a zombie after getting bit at JoAnn Fabrics and then stars on the reality show "Starting Over." That story also mentions the Container Store. Another good piece is just notes for writing a story about people with weird phobias who go on a Springer-like show, and two of the fears are Aldi's and the Dollar Store, going back to the theme of stores I think are hilarious just for existing. So I guess you could describe her style as humorous with a bizarre twist on ultra-modern reality at times, but a lot of the stories come off as someone just getting an idea they think is kind of funny (What if someone had a baby, and the very next day it turned into Ethan Hawke?) and trying to write an entire 15 pages around it with a completely abrubt ending. I stopped reading one story a page in that was just a list of nice things she wants to do/not do when she has a baby? Also, I complained of an occasionally "bloggy" writing style to a friend who was flipping through it, and he said, "Well it would have to be with titles like 'What Our Week Was Like.'" Another problem was she seems to be suffering from "I'm going to make fun of hipsters even though I am one myself" syndrome that we all have come down with these days. After all that though, I definitely half to give her props for experimenting and being original, albeit with mixed results, IMHO.

[Ben]

As funny and at times magically twisted as the stories in this book are overall, it is the two closing stories Most Everything in the World and Promise, that reminded me why I am such a fan of Elizabeth Crane: she knows relationship, and she endlessly, and wonderfully, captures the pain, confusion, and glee that comes with them like few others.

[Christine Palau · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is fantasy for adults--not that kind! And I should say, I really don't like fantasy, and I'm not a big reader of short stories. But this is fantasy for adults who are obsessive compulsive and enjoy reading about other obsessed (but oddly likable) people. "Banana Lover" and "Promise" were my favorites--probably because I relate to those the most. Fun to read aloud, too!

[Heidi Mckye · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jeezus Betsy Crane, you are so funny! Really it's kind of fantastic! Okay, more than kind of! I've discovered a love of exclamation!

[Claire · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked the stories and her writing. A lot of whimsy in these--maybe a bit heavy on the whimsical? But she has a deft touch and they were all enjoyable. I will have forgotten this book in about two months, but I don't regret reading it

[Esther Chaya · Rating 2 out of 5]

Loved the first story, couldn't get myself through the second half of the book...

[Not Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

Paperback.

[Olívia · Rating 2 out of 5]

It wasn’t bad for the reason people are saying it’s bad but that doesn’t exactly mean it was good

[Anna R · Rating 5 out of 5]

Front-loaded, but amazing. I am shocked this book/the author isn’t more popular. Elizabeth Crane deserves better!!!

[Krysten]

oops I forgot I was reading this 🤷‍♀️

[Tripp · Rating 5 out of 5]

With a title like You Must be This Happy to Enter, you might expect bucket loads of bitter irony. This third collection of stories by Elizabeth Crane is actually filled with laugh out loud humor, strange turns of events and stories that look realistically at the world, while maintaining the belief that life is worth living.

These stories are some of the best I have read in years, and remind me of another favorite, Ted Chiang. Like Chiang, Crane sets up bizarre situations (a woman goes through life with words on her head, a woman becomes a zombie and is put on a reality TV show, a couple's child turns into Ethan Hawke and so on) and then sees how they react. These people find that yes, their lives are strange, but they are still good and worth living.

A major theme of the book is realizing that you are different (usually bizarrely so) but living with it rather than ranting, collapsing or withdrawing. Don't worry, Crane doesn't go all Free to Be You and Me on you. No, it manages to portray a sincere belief in goodness without becoming cloying or cheap. I think she manages this by focusing on the individuals and not trying to present lessons. The humor doesn't hurt either. As I mentioned this is a funny book.

Since this is a short story collection and they tend to be spotty, I planned to read a few strories each night, but I found myself powering through it all at once. I guess I need to get her other two collections.

[Anne · Rating 4 out of 5]

In her third collection, Elizabeth Crane explores through a range of edgy, fantastical stories what it means to be unironically happy...sometimes ironically, sometimes not. Each premise is boldly imaginative -- a zombie tries televised therapy; an entire town turns transparent, then gentrifies; the perfect guy not only leaves his girlfriend but encourages your stalker-like behavior; people get arrested for being happy, fired for being sincere. I applaud the author for managing to call our cynicism into question without losing her own bite. (Get it...zombies, bite?) Much of the writing is simultaneously lovable and annoying, like that friend you adore spending time with but who makes you just a little nuts...you know, the one who recaps The Hills with such deadpan enthusiasm that you worry she's in it for more than camp value. (And then she makes you realize that being into anything *solely* for camp value is kind of sad, so you feel oddly moved.) Star-wise, this book is really a 3.5er. I like most of these stories very much (and really love several), while one or two are just a tad device-driven for my taste. The collection works even better together than each story does on its own, so I recommend reading You Must Be This Happy... in one stolen sitting -- maybe on a bench in the middle of a mall, with a frothy coffee drink or Coldstone Gotta-Have-It.

**Longer review to come when I launch the fancy book blog in June.**

[jess · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked this up so I'd have some short stories to round out my 2008 reading list. It is adorable and dear in that This American Life sort of way (from WBEZ Chicago) and annoying and irrelevant in the same sort of way. There are moments I laughed & cheered - stories that overuse exclamation points, a woman turned into a zombie at the Jo-Anns Fabric Store, many reality tv show and internet references - including Livejournal's prominent role in one story. There were some drippy, dull, extra-earnest moments that I cringed.

This is the kind of book that proves that it is easier to write about misery, sorry, malaise, dread, and general unhappiness than to attempt narratives from optimists and happy people. The contentedness of happy people is such a singular, isolated experience that it seems contrived to form it into a short story.

I think the book is front-loaded with some of the better stories, but many collections like this are. Overall, the collection is a little cutesy, but not painfully so. And the final mark of my impression -- I mentioned some of these stories in conversation several times, which can be tough with unknown collections of short stories. It's not my fault I liked the most sci-fi story best (Clearview).

[A · Rating 4 out of 5]

Most of the characters speak like your much more clever, sarcastic, yet oddly optimistic best friend. They may make stupid decisions and do the wrong things, but they're not stupid. The collection is clever and light; maybe slight but the writer is talented enough to make it seem refreshing that she doesn't try to more than what she is.

It's a very girlish collection of short stories, and very fun and funny. Her characters aren't afraid to admit they watch trashy reality shows, and the writer gets laughs out of our simultaneous fixation and shame towards the genre. The first story is written entirely in exclamatory sentences about a recently dumped and unemployed woman who maintains a cheery outlook on life through a somewhat maniacal perseverance. The second story is about a woman who's recently turned into a zombie. A lifestyle change the writer somehow turns into a happy ending while satirizing Dr. Phil.At times LOL-funny, it also has heartfelt moments as in the final tale about a mother awaiting her soon-to-be adopted child.

It's an easy read; the stories are short and can be finished between stops on a subway ride. It's a good pick-me-up book.

[Vincent · Rating 4 out of 5]

I kept hearing Alison Brie's character on Community, Annie, as I read the stories in this book. There is this purposeful superficial quality to the tone of voice in the writing -- a wide-eyed dreamy "detachedness" --that belies the heavier, darker observations the narrators in these stories seem to make unconsciously. It would be unbearable after a few stories, if there weren't a fantastic, sci-fi, Twilight-Zoney vibe thrown into the mix. In the story, "The Glistening Head of Ricky Ricardo Begs Further Experimentation", a women learns she can pluck characters out of her TV and interact with them. The drawback is that they are the same 9-inch height they are on her television. In the story before that, "Betty the Zombie", a woman who is bitten and turned into a zombie earns a spot on a popular reality show and competes to win by having revelations and breakthroughs. My favorite story in the book is "Donovan's Closet". In it a woman becomes obsessed with the lemony smell of her new boyfriend's closet. It's not as fantastic and Twilight-Zoney as the others but it is just as clever in representing addiction and obsession.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm just a little over halfway through this, and I'm already going to give it five stars. I've been glued to this on the G train. I want the G train to keep going so I can finish these stories before I have to read other things for my day job.

The title's perfectly apt: YOU MUST BE THIS HAPPY TO ENTER, with a happy bunny/precious moments creature staring at you from the cover, arms spread wide like a kid who can grasp the concepts of measurement to some basic degree. While these are stories for happy people, they're not saccharine. While these aren't saccharine, they're far from depressing. In one story a woman becomes a zombie and makes the best of it by going on one of those midday Lifetime reality shows where a houseful of women trump their problems by sharing gold stars and making papercrafts. All the while, you notice that there is no cynicism. None.

And you're all the happier for it.
http://athimblefullofcornoil.blogspot...

[Cortney · Rating 4 out of 5]

There's something brave about this collection I can't quite put my finger on. Maybe it's how these stories bounce around subjects that you aren't supposed to ever write about--a genuine belief in god, love between people that isn't fucked up, reality television, taking pleasure in clothes shopping, and the things everyone else is writing about badly (i.e. zombies). So there's that. Reading this book and enjoying the crap out of it is like telling grad school to go fuck itself, because these stories mean something. So there.

On the other hand, it takes a minute to get into all this earnestness and honesty. Occasionally, the earnestness and honesty don't quite work. Sometimes it's jarring to be in the middle of reading a story that means something and then get distracted thinking about some pop culture thing. Like, "Hey, I want to get back to the story now, but I'm busy watching TV in my head."

But mostly, eighty-five-percentedly, wonderful. And brave.

[Helena · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought this was uneven, half of the stories I loved and connected with the characters and got the humor and everything, but the other half of the stories, I didn't care at all. Still, well worth reading for the good stories I think! 2 of my favorite stories were Donovan's closet (about a woman who becomes obsessed with her boyfriend's lemon-smelling closet) and Varieties of Loudness in Chicago (observations about the people who live in the same neighborhood as the narrator).

Here's a quote from one of the stories:
"Jennie's interests include Jennie. Or talking about Jennie. Boys and fashion, occasionally, but only as they pertain to Jennie. She's the kind of girl who will stop you in the middle of a story and say, That reminds me, and tell you a story about herself that has nothing to do with your story in any way that you can discern. Your story could be about your sick aunt which will remind her about something about herself and your sick aunt will be no part of it."

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've been a huge fan of Elizabeth Crane since When the Messenger is Hot. I appreciate the experimentation she does with the short story form -- it's like reading good performance art. It's exhilarating, weird, and daring, and above all, relentlessly contemporary.

This collection's best stories experiment with the completely mythical and the completely mundane (e.g., zombies and reality TV). Throughout, Crane has a devastatingly keen ear for modern language in all its hipster-ironic disposability. Bonus points to this volume because:

1) it contains one of the funniest two-word sentences I've ever read. (Hint: it has to do with potato chips.)

2) the last story made me weep openly on the subway.

[Trish · Rating 1 out of 5]

I adore Crane's previous two short story collections, When the Messenger is Hot and All This Heavenly Glory. This one didn't connect with me. There's a lot of generic weirdness (mysterious words appear on a girl's forehead, an entire town turns transparent) but I felt these stories don't feel grounded or deep. My favorite, "What Our Week Was Like," feels complete as it quickly sketches, in Crane's trademark rattle-trap rambling, how a typical college girl slides into alcoholism, but this is familiar, well-trod territory for Crane and the story could have been lifted from an early draft of Messenger.

Sadly, forgettable.

[Marjorie Hakala]

My brother just came back from Greece, where he apparently had some kind of life-changing Greek salad, and now he is sad every time he has to eat American produce. I just finished an A.S. Byatt anthology, and I could not bear to read more than four of the stories in this book. I'm not going to rate this one because I have no idea whether it was any good; all I know is that the level of hyper hipster ironic post-modernism here (a story consisting entirely of notes for a story, another that finishes very nearly every sentence with an exclamation point) is not my cup of tea. Some of you might like it, though! I really have no idea.

[gwen g · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm finished with the Elizabeth Crane trifecta now, and I can't wait for her to write another book. This one was markedly different from the previous two sets of stories -- more fantastical, less self-conscious, more varied, even funnier.

I did miss her old constant narrator-character, who only popped up occasionally (most notably in a story about drinking... I'm forgetting the name, but it should be taught in college writing classes) but I love the magical realism direction she's going. I mean, one of these characters is Betty the Zombie, living in a rehab house on a Dr. Phil-style reality show to deal with her "flesh-eating issues." How can you resist?

[Anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Initially, I was a little disappointed in these stories. I was excpecting them to be laugh out loud funny in a David Sedaris kind of way. They weren't. But, they did end up being extremely quirky, up beat, and very amusing. Many of the them flirt with a faith in God that surprised me as well. I am still puzzling out how I feel how this aspect of the stories. The real gem for me came at the very end of the collection. "Promise" is a particularly charming promise to a woman's unborn child. This one made me smile, laugh, cry, and dream about promises I would make as a mother. Overall, it was a nice collection to have on the road with me.

[Greg Metcalf · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am in love with the author of the first story in this collection!

Actually, the same author wrote all the stories in this collection! Also, I'm not really in love with her! It's just an expression! Hyperbole! All the stories in this collection are worth reading! Some just spoke to me more than others! Isn't that the sign of a good short story collection? I think it is! The first story was my favorite! The last story was my second favorite! The rest were in between! Get it? One story in this collection (my favorite!) used a lot of one particular mark of punctuation! But I won't tell you which one! That might spoil it!