The Souvenir Museum is a collection of twelve contemporary stories that touch on familial bonds and relationships with a hint of whimsy and humor. The modern narratives tackle real-life issues that cut across age, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, and race. They delve into the harsh realities of life while capturing the oddities and quirks of the characters in these situations. On a larger scope, they address our collective lives by depicting the fears and desires that drive our choices.
Though each of the stories encompasses its own motifs they dwell upon the loss, love, and strong bonds between parent and child, siblings and spouses. Each also finds the characters undergoing a particular crisis in life that requires them to change in pursuit of penance, closure, affection, or comfort. Elizabeth McCracken strikes a perfect balance by generating the right emotional depth and range to the stories. As such she addresses the tragedies of life while offering comic relief through the absurdism of life situations.
The most prominent narrative entails four connected stories involving a couple—Jack and Sadie—navigating the uncharted territory that is matrimony. The story akin to the other narratives expresses owning up to the past or a mistake by embracing what is ahead, though imperfect. Cathleen Schine of the New York Times Book Review wrote “Always...shining through the carefully, beautifully painted grays, is the clarity of McCracken's humor, bright and invigorating, like flickers of sunlight. Humor illuminates her work, revealing things clearly that we might have overlooked. McCracken refuses to distinguish between the absurdity of comedy and the absurdity of tragedy.”
