Bedtime Story

ABBEY'S BOOKSELLER PICK ----- How do you tell your son that his father - how do you tell yourself that your beloved partner - has a disease that will kill him if not treated? And that the treatments to prevent his death may kill him? This is the dilemma Chloe Hooper faces when the father of their two young boys is diagnosed with a rare and extremely nasty form of leukaemia. She turns to children's stories to see if they can help make sense of the dark places, to explain the perilous pathways and monsters and brave characters waiting to assist the hero towards the treasure of ever after.

This is a memoir of fierce intimacy and emotion, of the intersection between story telling and experience, of family and love and the end of days, and of arriving at the hoped-for place of safety after the quest is followed. Enhanced by the dark ink washes of illustrator Anna Walker, this is sure to become a modern classic.  Lindy

‘This book is a miracle of light and meaning-making from one of our finest writers. Venturing inward with extraordinary grace, Hooper explores – and extends – the long literary line surging with our deepest inherited wisdom about how to embrace our finite lives. The result is nothing less than the hero's journey we have been collectively starving for. Telling you this is like trying to describe the sun; it is a book so powerful and beautiful  – so utterly its own – that it can only be experienced directly.’  -- Sarah Krasnostein, author of The Trauma Cleaner and The Believer 'Everything you’d ever want in a bedtime story – heroes and heroines, puzzles and dangers, invisible forces, birds, trees, beasts, poetry, sadness and joy. Stories within stories. I was spellbound from the start. As for the ending... I can’t tell you that.' -- Paul Kelly, AO 'Exquisitely beautiful. This book is an act of love.' -- Anna Funder, author of All That I Am and Stasiland ‘An important book about the ways fiction can provide escape and hope and meaning in the face of unbearable pain. The ways it can teach and guide and contain, illuminating the darkness. A book about the marvel and wonder of children, and our terror for them, when things change in ways we can neither predict nor control. A book about love and story, and why one is essential to the other. Deeply moving, compelling and thought-provoking, Bedtime Story explores the reasons why we write for children, the mystery we are trying to get to the heart of, the tools we are trying to give to our young people to survive. A book about the ways we can triumph over loss and grief, with the stories that we write, the worlds we draw. Deeply engrossing and honest, human, full of love and tenderness, with moments of sparkling humour in the struggle. I loved everything about Bedtime Story. I loved particularly what it taught me about authors who write for children, the ways that writing and reading provides compensation, balancing the scales between loss and love.’ -- Sofie Laguna, author of The Eye of the Sheep and Too Loud Lily ‘Chloe Hooper has a formidable talent to take complex stories and ideas and truths, and to distil them into a language of direct and powerful beauty. This is a story of grief and of patience, of hope and acceptance. It is also a reminder of the solace that books give us, and of how the imaginary worlds we dive into as children remain with is for all our lives, of how they guide us into adulthood and maturity. There is a quiet courage and strength in this book. It is both gentle and uncompromising, a love letter to family and to literature that is bracingly unsentimental. I was profoundly moved, and profoundly grateful.’ -- Christos Tsiolkas ‘[A]n exquisite work in which her prodigious talent for getting to the true heart of a story is turned inwards. Hooper invites the reader into her home, heart, and head, to sit by her children’s beds, but carefully, gracefully. She staves off easy mawkishness and strikes a perfect balance – with mood-perfect illustrations by Anna Walker – as she searches for a way to tell her children about the likely tragedy that awaits. While it’s a deeply personal dilemma, Hooper finds universality in a magical and compelling book.’  -- Lucy Clarke, Guardian 'There are countless exquisite moments in this book about life stripped to its essentials.' * Sydney Morning Herald * ‘I loved Bedtime Story by Chloe Hooper so much! A sensitive & beautifully executed exploration of the power & purposes of storytelling.' -- Kate Forsyth 'Chloe Hooper is a beautiful writer... Her latest book is incredibly personal, yet she still weaves an outward curiosity that drives all of her non fiction; a compulsion to figure out the why, how, and if, of life.' -- Zan Rowe ‘shows the power of words and literature to comfort us during the darkest moments of our lives’ -- Readings, Best Non-Fiction of 2022