The Hero of This Book: A Washington Post and New York Best Book of the Year â A Heartwrenching Story of Mothers and Daughters, Grief, and Love

McCracken, Elizabeth

ISBN 10: 0062971271 / ISBN 13: 9780062971272

Published by Ecco, 2022

About this Item

Book is in like new condition with only potential shelf wear. No marking or highlighting.

Seller Inventory # EVV.0062971271.LN

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Hero of This Book: A Washington Post and New York Best Book of the Year â A Heartwrenching Story of Mothers and Daughters, Grief, and Love
• Publisher: Ecco
• Publication Date: 2022
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0062971271
• ISBN 13: 9780062971272
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: like_new

About this title

Synopsis

Named a Top Ten Best Book of the Year by Time and People

Named a Best Book of the Year by: Washington Post * Kirkus Reviews * New Yorker * Chicago Public Library * NPR * Oprah Daily * Philadelphia Enquirer

A taut, groundbreaking new novel from bestselling and award-winning author Elizabeth McCracken, about a writer’s relationship with her larger-than-life mother—and about the very nature of writing, memory, and art

Ten months after her mother’s death, the narrator of The Hero of This Book takes a trip to London. The city was a favorite of her mother’s, and as the narrator wanders the streets, she finds herself reflecting on her mother’s life and their relationship. Thoughts of the past meld with questions of the future: Back in New England, the family home is now up for sale, its considerable contents already winnowed.

The woman, a writer, recalls all that made her complicated mother extraordinary—her brilliant wit, her generosity, her unbelievable obstinacy, her sheer will in seizing life despite physical difficulties—and finds herself wondering how her mother had endured. Even though she wants to respect her mother’s nearly pathological sense of privacy, the woman must come to terms with whether making a chronicle of this remarkable life constitutes an act of love or betrayal.

The Hero of This Book  is a searing examination of grief and renewal, and of a deeply felt relationship between a child and her parents. What begins as a question of filial devotion ultimately becomes a lesson in what it means to write. At once comic and heartbreaking, with prose that delights at every turn, this is a novel of such piercing love and tenderness that we are reminded that art is what remains when all else falls away.

About the Author

Elizabeth McCracken is the author of eight books, including The Hero of This Book, The Souvenir Museum (long-listed for the National Book Award), Bowlaway, Thunderstruck & Other Stories (winner of the 2014 Story Prize and long-listed for the National Book Award), and The Giant’s House (a National Book Award finalist). Her stories have appeared in The Best American Short Stories five times, and have won three Pushcart Prizes, two National Magazine Awards, and an O. Henry Prize. She has served on the faculty at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and currently holds the James A. Michener Chair in Fiction at the University of Texas at Austin.