The Hero of this Book
'A sublime gift’ Meg MasonSelect a format:
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Summary
‘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
Reviews
Into 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
