The Souvenir Museum, Elizabeth McCracken [bill gates best books .txt] 📗

Sara Birmingham.

Everyone at Dunow, Carlson, and Lerner, especially Henry Dunow, who has been my agent and dear pal for thirty years.

Megan Lynch, for early faith in this book; my colleagues, particularly Lisa Olstein and Deb Olin Unferth; Catherine Nichols for last-minute name assistance; Lisa Sweasy of Vent-haven, for an interview about the late Jimmy Nelson that inspired a story.

Jonathan Green and Elizabeth Gallant Green, for shelter in any number of storms.

Arno, Claudia, and Callum Nauwels provided some notable architecture, Irish and Dutch.

Søren Lind and the Brecht Hus, for inspiration and lodging in Denmark.

Yiyun Li, with much love and gratitude for ineffable things, amid all the words.

Paul Lisicky and Ann Patchett, as usual, read this manuscript and were enormously helpful, kind, and generous. Scott Heim read these stories and gave me irreplaceable help, from sentence to paragraph to story.

Thanks to my family—including my brother, Harry, and his wife, Marie Domingo. My lovely in-laws—Mary Harvey and the late Simon Harvey; the late James Harvey; Simon, Catherine, Charlie, and Henrietta Burchell; Nicholas, Marie-Ange, Elfreda, and Oscar Harvey—resemble no fictional in-laws contained in this book.

Gus and Matilda Harvey are the children I would have invented for myself if my imagination were good enough.

To Edward Carey I owe debts, both literary and otherwise, that I have never successfully put into words.

“Proof,” “Mistress Mickle All at Sea,” “A Walk-Through Human Heart,” “Birdsong from the Radio,” “Nothing, Darling, Only Darling, Darling,” and “It’s Not You” were originally published in Zoetrope All-Story (with many thanks, as always, to Michael Ray). “Mistress Mickle All at Sea” and “It’s Not You” were published in The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses, edited by Bill Henderson. “It’s Not You” was published in Best American Short Stories 2020 (with thanks to Curtis Sittenfeld and Heidi Pitlor). “Birdsong from the Radio” was written for the anthology xo Orpheus: Fifty New Myths, edited by Kate Bernheimer; it was reprinted in The O. Henry Prize Stories 2015, with thanks to Marissa Colón Margolies, Taylor Flory Ogletree, and Laura Furman. “Robinson Crusoe at the Waterpark” was originally published in Reader, I Married Him: Stories Inspired by Jane Eyre, edited by Tracy Chevalier. “Two Sad Clowns” was originally published in O: The Oprah Magazine. “The Get-Go” was originally published in American Short Fiction. “The Irish Wedding” was originally published in the Atlantic. “The Souvenir Museum” was originally published in Harper’s Magazine.

About the Author

ELIZABETH MCCRACKEN is the author of six previous works—Bowlaway, Here’s Your Hat What’s Your Hurry, The Giant’s House (a National Book Award finalist), Niagara Falls All Over Again, the memoir An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination, and Thunderstruck & Other Stories (winner of the 2014 Story Prize and long-listed for the National Book Award)—three of which were New York Times Notable Books. She has received grants and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. She has served on the faculty at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and currently holds the James Michener Chair in Fiction at the University of Texas at Austin.

Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.

Also by Elizabeth McCracken

Here’s Your Hat What’s Your Hurry

The Giant’s House

Niagara Falls All Over Again

An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination

Thunderstruck and Other Stories

Bowlaway

Copyright

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

THE SOUVENIR MUSEUM. Copyright © 2021 by Elizabeth McCracken. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Ecco® and HarperCollins® are trademarks of HarperCollins Publishers.

Cover design by Allison Saltzman

Cover photograph © Juan Moyano/Stocksy

FIRST EDITION

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: McCracken, Elizabeth, author.

Title: The souvenir museum : stories / Elizabeth McCracken.

Description: First edition. | New York : Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, [2021]

Identifiers: LCCN 2020040870 (print) | LCCN 2020040871 (ebook) | ISBN 9780062971289 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780062971265 (ebook)

Subjects: LCGFT: Short stories.

Classification: LCC PS3563.C35248 S68 2021 (print) | LCC PS3563.C35248 (ebook) | DDC 813/.54—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020040870

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020040871

Digital Edition APRIL 2021 ISBN: 978-0-06-297126-5

Version 03052021

Print ISBN: 978-0-06-297128-9

About the Publisher

Australia

HarperCollins Publishers Australia Pty. Ltd.

Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street

Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia

www.harpercollins.com.au

Canada

HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

Bay Adelaide Centre, East Tower

22 Adelaide Street West, 41st Floor

Toronto, Ontario, M5H 4E3

www.harpercollins.ca

India

HarperCollins India

A 75, Sector 57

Noida

Uttar Pradesh 201 301

www.harpercollins.co.in

New Zealand

HarperCollins Publishers New Zealand

Unit D1, 63 Apollo Drive

Rosedale 0632

Auckland, New Zealand

www.harpercollins.co.nz

United Kingdom

HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF, UK

www.harpercollins.co.uk

United States

HarperCollins Publishers Inc.

195 Broadway

New York, NY 10007

www.harpercollins.com