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 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.
