On the surface, the Copelands might appear to be a typical family in a small, Midwestern town. In the hands of Elizabeth Crane, however, their world is skewed by the absurdity and cruelty of life. The mother is numb from the suicide of her secret lover; her unaware husband, a walking Wikipedia, fears he might be losing his memory. Their daughter, an angst-ridden 19-year-old, longs for a "career" on reality TV, while their nine-year-old son is convinced he must choose between his love of crossword puzzles and girls. Add a grandfather suffering the tangled forgetfulness of Parkinson's disease and his mother, a 98-year-old matriarch whose sharp, keen mind enables her still to dream big, and what emerges in We Only Know So Much is an eccentric cast of characters whose lives are rife with conflict.
Crane is an accomplished, prolific short story writer; in her debut novel, she makes painful issues accessible via a clever, original narrative voice that allows the reader to peek inside her characters. By accentuating their offbeat flaws and failures, Crane reveals a dark, yet endearing, sense of humanity. In the end, the "ordinary" aspects of living life, however dysfunctional, escalate until the novel reaches thought-provoking conclusions about the meaning of life. -- Kathleen Gerard, blogger at Reading Between the Lines