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The Hero of this Book

Elizabeth McCracken

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English
Vintage
13 February 2024
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

'A sublime gift' MEG MASON

From the bestselling author, a taut, heartrending new novel about a writer's relationship with her larger-than-life mother.

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

'Confirms McCracken as among the finest contemporary chroniclers of everyday life... wonderful' GUARDIAN

'Tender, funny, heartbreaking... a writer who always delights' RUMAAN ALAM
By:  
Imprint:   Vintage
Country of Publication:   United Kingdom
Dimensions:   Height: 198mm,  Width: 130mm,  Spine: 12mm
Weight:   141g
ISBN:   9781529919653
ISBN 10:   1529919657
Pages:   192
Publication Date:  
Audience:   General/trade ,  ELT Advanced
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active

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 Imag-ination, 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 fellow-ships 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 Fic-tion at the University of Texas at Austin.

Reviews for The Hero of this Book

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 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 * Her words create an exquisite alchemy that makes a reader ready to follow her anywhere, believe every word she writes down... With every vital, potent sentence, McCracken conveys the electric and primal nature of that first fundamental love. * New York Times * This story is a tribute to how great writing can elevate any subject. * Sunday Times, *Summer Reads of 2023* * McCracken is such a witty writer, full of sharp observations about life, writing, relationships and the people she meets. * The Times, *Books of the Year* * How reassuring it is to have writers like Elizabeth McCracken among us... One of those fleet-footed writers who will never be trapped, or even reliably tracked, by aboutness... Her speciality is the interior, and the interior is vast. We must bring our own compasses, emotional and aesthetic. -- Yiyun Li, author of The Book of Goose A soulful, searching portrait. * Times Literary Supplement *


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