Description
Book Synopsis‘A sublime gift’ MEG MASON
A taut, ground-breaking new novel about a writer's relationship with her larger-than-life mother - and about the very nature of writing.
Ten months after her mother’s death, the narrator of The Hero of This Book walks across London on a quiet Sunday. The city was a favourite of her mother’s, and as the narrator wanders the streets, she finds herself recalling all that made her complicated mother extraordinary. Even though the woman, a writer, wants to respect her mother’s nearly pathological sense of privacy, she must decide whether making a chronicle of this remarkable life constitutes an act of love or betrayal.
* A New Yorker, Time, Washington Post, Oprah Daily and NPR Book of the Year *
‘I absolutely loved it. A moving portrayal of daughterhood…suffused with warmth and love’ MEGAN HUNTER, author of The Harpy
‘Confirms McCracken as among the finest contemporary chroniclers of everyday life… wonderful’ GUARDIAN
‘Tender, funny, heartbreaking… a writer who always delights’ RUMAAN ALAM, author of Leave the World Behind
Trade ReviewInto a single, most singular novel,
McCracken fits everything we adult daughters know and feel and love and fear about our beautiful, complicated mothers, and could never say.
A sublime gift. -- Meg Mason, author of Sorrow and Bliss
What could be better value than a book set over one day that you can read in one day, but that will stay in your heart and refuse to go...
One of the greatest memoirs of a parent. * The Times *
Confirms McCracken as among the finest contemporary chroniclers of everyday life. Like Elizabeth Strout and Ann Patchett, she combines a blistering intelligence with deep humanity. * Guardian *
Easily one of the best novels (or is it actually a memoir?) that will be published this year... It is touching and funny, and full of sharp-eyed observations about family life and parents and how your childhood forms you. * The Times *
A more loving and moving tribute to its subject is hard to imagine. * Guardian *
