How does she do it?

I don't know how to review—let alone critique—Elizabeth MeCracken's short story collection The Souvenir Museum. 

A dozen stories. Individual characters—individuals—in every one. Domestic and international settings: Ireland, Scotland, somewhere in the midwest (Illinois? Indiana?), London, Rotterdam, Swampscott, Galveston, Austin, Boston, Denmark, Amsterdam.

Which is not to mention an original—or interesting—situation in every one but I'll mention some anyway: A wedding in rural Ireland. An affair between a directionless young woman who drinks Jim Beam and a much older radio advice doctor. A young man and an older ventriloquist who takes him into her bed. Two fathers take their son to a waterpark. A middle-age couple enjoy a honeymoon on a moored Amsterdam canal boat.

Aside from character, setting, and situation the language of the stories is worth the price of admission. Here are some examples literally taken at random:

—It was his eyes that confused things, so joltingly blue they seemed to hold every emotion and its opposite.

—Then, helped by a dozen hands, as in a child's séance, they were lifted up and the cave was filled with applause, genuine, sarcastic, dutiful.

—New Year's Eve in a Rotterdam garret, the whole block blacked out, bottle rockets rattling the casements: Mistress Mickle, villainess of the children's game show Barnaby Grudge, off duty and far from home, ate a cold canned hot dog in the dark and pronounced it delicious.

—She's basically a hermit, Sadie had told him, and Jack had imagined a lady lighthouse keeper, a kind of nun—not a nun nun, since Linda was Jewish, but a woman of the book, devoted to reading.

Unlike the writing I often find in literary magazines McCracken's English is not so rich wuth metaphor and fine words it is almost cloying. She'll create a word if necessary—"joltingly"—but it does not call attention to itself for interrupt the flow. The Souvenir Museum is amazing. I wish I could tell you how she does it. I can only suggest you see for yourself.