The Hero of This Book, Elizabeth McCracken
The Hero of This Book, Elizabeth McCracken
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The Hero of This Book
A Novel

Author: Elizabeth McCracken

Narrator: Elizabeth McCracken

Unabridged: 4 hr 33 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: HarperAudio

Published: 10/04/2022


Synopsis

A Most Anticipated Book of Fall from: Los Angeles Times * Boston Globe * BookPage * Book Riot * The Millions * Publishers Weekly * LitHub * St. Louis Post Dispatch * Town & CountryA 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 artTen 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 Elizabeth McCracken

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.


Reviews

Is this brilliant piece on what it’s like to be a writer or is it just clever? Is it an autobiographical novel or a memoir? Is it an ode to writing or a tribute to her mother? I couldn’t decide. McCracken says it’s not a memoir but for most of this, that’s exactly what it seemed like to me. Of cours......more

Thanks to HarperCollins Publishers for my ARC of “The Hero of this Book” by Author Elizabeth McCracken. 📚 ❤️ 🥰 “I have no interest in ordinary people, having met so few of them in my life.” “My mother and I like churches for their touristic possibilities, filled as they were with sculpture, stained g......more