About mini reviews:
Maybe you’re not an audio book person, or maybe you are. I provide mini reviews of audio books and give a recommendation on the format. Was this book improved by a voice actor? Would a physical copy have been better? Perhaps they complement each other? Read on. . .
What happens when a woman in a marriage of fifteen years is approached by her husband, and he says he’s not happy? This happened to Elizabeth Crane. In her memoir This Story Will Change, Crane writes in third person about “the woman.” Readers learn how her parents affected her feelings about marriage, and that she did not get married until she was 43 to a man over a decade younger. Both were alcoholics, and he had just finished his program, while she had finished hers years before.
Once upon 2004, a woman and a man were married in a backyard ceremony on a glorious September Saturday on the west side of Chicago, handmade streamers in the trees, friends and family present to bear witness. They were happy and in love and people knew they were happy and in love. If anyone thought, Oh this is a terrible idea, they forever held their peace.
Crane states that he would build her things in her home, such as a reading nook, and he always wanted her to cook for him, though she hated it and was unskilled. They never argued. They bought a dog together. They moved so he could earn an MFA in art. He had punk friends who did not accept her at first.
Crane’s story has a distance created by the use of third person, making me feel like I was reading tightly-written novella about marriage. Some of that brevity can be attributed to the short chapters, which read more like flash fiction than nonfiction. I’ve read Crane’s short stories, and she excels in the form. Some chapters consist only of questions, whereas others look at a moment in time.
This Story Will Change has the effect of making you examine your own relationships, turning away from stereotypes about relationships in danger — perhaps those that are openly toxic, or the couple argue constantly — and ask where the problems begin, and how, and why. Maybe you ask if it was the age difference, or someone not paying attention, or slowly falling out of love. There is no sense of a frantic person trying to get their side out first so as to appear the victim. What happens after they separate and learn what it’s like to live alone? I really enjoyed this memoir, though I don’t think you need to listen to the audiobook. Crane reads it herself, and her style isn’t always fluid.
Grab the Lapels 
What drew you to this book? Just curious.
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When I read her first set of short stories, I thought they were just amazingly creative. Many years later, I learned that she was living in (or visiting?) Kalamazoo, which is one hour from my house. I ended up going to see her read, and it was a nightmare. The staff person leading the evening knew her and were friends, so it was way too intimate and cozy for me to follow along with all the references and stories. Anyway, I really like her short story writing style and had wondered what happened to her. I see she has a few novels, so those are on my TBR now.
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Interesting choice to use third person in a memoir. I suppose it allows a person to step back and evaluate things more clearly? Or, it helps them to cope with the upset? Or maybe not even deal with it at all? Was it an amicable split?
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I wonder if it meant she was able to talk about hard things without feeling involved. Maybe she couldn’t have written the book otherwise. She has another book, one about her mother, that is written like a memoir but then is also fiction because her mom is dead and she writes like she’s really, truly talking to her mom. It’s a creative use of bending genre. The split didn’t seem amicable, but I waffle because the writing doesn’t really get into screaming/fighting in a “close” way that makes me feel like I’m experiencing it. If anything, it reads more like how a seemingly normal, midwestern liberal couple could realize things are not going well when they had thought otherwise for a long time. Were there red flags? Could the reader look more closely for red flags in her marriage? It feels like a memoir that is about relationships being unknowable despite how well we know them.
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From all you say, and the quote you provide, it sounds like she is a great writer to start with … and that can make an interesting memoir great. This sounds sad but worth reading.
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She has another book that is a memoir/fiction that plays with genre in an interesting way. Crane’s mother died, but she writes her memoir as if the mother is still alive and they hash out old qualms. This book is all memoir, but the short vignettes, some of which are only questions, read like a genre bender as well.
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I’m only surprised that we’re not overflowing with writers writing about divorces. It’s such an intense time and the writing just flows, it seems to me. How else are they meant to work stuff out, work out what they’re feeling I mean, I can see talking to the other party might also help work stuff out.
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I think it depends on how they write and what the goal is. I’ve read a book about a serious breakup the was more like a long text. The woman wrote like she wanted to get her story out first so she could prove how she was the victim. But that can’t be a memoir. There must be other ways of approaching the memoir if the divorce was fairly uneventful, or it can straight up be a raucous memoir if they did things like light each other’s cars on fire in anger, etc. I’d read that.
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Telling it from the third person is an interesting choice and I could easily see how it might help the author tell her story with greater perspective. I’m not super drawn to reading stories of divorce but this does sound intriguing.
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In general I don’t like marriage stories in memoir form, but I know Crane is creative and plays with genre. In this case, she bends the memoir a bit by writing in what sounds like (I had the audiobook) vignettes. Some are all questions, some are lists of things she noticed, etc. Some of the questions make you really think about your own relationship and if your spouse does the same things her ex did, which is a little nerve wracking.
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Ooh, I couldn’t be doing with this one – my best friend saw her twins off to university, sat down with her husband of 20 years, her 50th birthday round the corner, to start planning for how their life was going to be and announced he loved her but wasn’t in love with her and was leaving, and left, and now lives in Australia having married the woman he o-so-definitely wasn’t seeing at the time he left o no not really no we believe him honest. This weekend she is moving in with her sister after having sold the marital home but having found no new house yet that will be suitable for her and the kids that she could get.
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It feels terribly unfair for one person to wait until the children are out of the house. My mom and I were just talking about how it can be easy for lovers to become roommates, and I can see how children might be distracting enough that that that don’t notice it happening; however, to immediately move in with someone else is a different story. He should have said something when he caught feelings.
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[…] brink, not even after he configured a hand mixer motor in a peanut butter jar. No, my interest in This Story Will Change was more about Elizabeth Crane herself. I love her short stories, and I read another “memoir” she wrote called The […]
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I enjoy reading books about marriage, but the use of third person here is an odd choice, I’m not sure I would like that. Also an odd choice to frame it as short stories, because I like a sense of continuity when the topic relationships. Likely not for me, but I appreciate this review! I also love the cover…
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I almost wonder if her brain worked in short bursts as she wrote about the divorce, or even as she experienced it. Also, by putting it in third person she could have some distance, and thus emotional control, maybe?
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Yes totally, these both make sense. And everything processes things differently. Writing this book was likely therapeutic for her in some way.
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