"Souvenir: a memory you could buy. A memory you could plan to keep instead of being left with the rubble of what happened."
Title: The Souvenir Museum
Author: Elizabeth McCracken
Rating:
I am left wanting more from each of the stories in The Souvenir Museum. I shouldn’t be surprised because I know that is how short story collections work: a glance into a character's life to hopefully learn a lesson and read a perspective we wouldn’t necessarily focus on in a longer novel. Yet, the glimpses Elizabeth McCracken wrote weren’t long enough to make me feel changed by the end.
The characters Sadie and Jack reappeared in a few short stories (The Irish Wedding; A Splinter; The Get-Go Two Sad Clowns; Nothing, Darling, Only Darling, Darling). I love romance, and their relationship was just interesting enough for me to want to keep reading. I have read quite a few romance novels in my life, so I have seen quite a few common themes carry over from book to book, yet Sadie and Jack’s relationship was unique. Elizabeth McCracken gave us small glimpses into their life, just enough for the readers to make their own assumptions about what happened before, between, and after the stories we read in The Souvenir Museum. I don’t want more of Sadie and Jack because they gave me just enough to understand them and create the rest of their story on my own.
Elizabeth McCracken’s writing is a little confusing. She ends most of the short stories in weird places and brings up interesting details that I didn’t think were essential to the storytelling. Details about the surroundings and visuals but not about the characters we are supposed to focus on. Short stories are short, so taking up pages with so many visual descriptions didn’t allow me to connect with the characters.
After reading the acknowledgments, I realized that the stories in The Souvenir Museum weren’t written together. They were all written for different journals and books but then put together to make this. The book’s title is also the title of one of the short stories. I wanted more from that one, especially since it is the title of the entire book. The characters in that story visit a souvenir museum for like two pages, and then they leave. I don’t like that specific short story itself, but it does tie the book together in a way.
What ties the whole book together for me is a quote in The Souvenir Museum short story:
“The museum was the grounds of a modest castle. Like Legoland, the name was full of promise. Souvenir: a memory you could buy. A memory you could plan to keep instead of being left with the rubble of what happened.”
This book, in its entirety, is a collection of memories. It's about families and relationships and children and people you meet along the journey of life. The characters in each story travel outside of their own homes, collecting metaphorical souvenirs from the people they meet and the places they go. You, as the reader, are not buying the book to read a long story about one set of characters. You are also reading each story like a souvenir: small memories from different places. I just wish that I could have taken something more than just a souvenir after reading the entire book. Even with short story collections, you are meant to take away something bigger than what is on the page. Sometimes short stories can give us even more lessons and joy than a longer novel with one set of characters would. That didn’t happen for me in The Souvenir Museum.
One of my reading goals for 2022 is to read more short story collections, so this was a good start for me. I have a baseline to rate and review the rest of the ones I read this year. If you are looking to get into short story collections, I recommend Someone Who Will Love You In All Your Damaged Glory. It is funny and heartbreaking, and I loved reading it last year. I wouldn’t start with The Souvenir Museum because it isn’t the best example of the emotional power that short story collections can have.
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