The Hero of this Book: 'A sublime gift’ Meg Mason
Jan 2023 · Random House
Ebook
192
Pages
About this ebook
‘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
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
About the author
Elizabeth McCracken is the award-winning author of eight books, Here's Your Hat What's Your Hurry, The Giant's House (a National Book Award finalist), Niagara Falls All Over Again, the memoir An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination, Thunderstruck & Other Stories (winner of the 2014 Story Prize, longlisted for the National Book Award), The Souvenir Museum and The Hero of This Book. She has received grants and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts and she was chosen as one of Granta's 20 Best American Writers Under 40. She has served on the faculty at the Iowa Writers' Workshop and currently holds the James Michener Chair for Fiction at the University of Texas at Austin.
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