{"product_id":"the-hero-of-this-book-a-novel-isbn-9780062971296","title":"The Hero of This Book: A Novel","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eNamed a Top Ten Best Book of the Year by \u003cem\u003eTime \u003c\/em\u003eand \u003cem\u003ePeople\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eNamed a Best Book of the Year by: \u003cem\u003eWashington Post * Kirkus Reviews \u003c\/em\u003e* \u003cem\u003eNew Yorker \u003c\/em\u003e* Chicago Public Library * NPR * \u003cem\u003eOprah Daily \u003c\/em\u003e* \u003cem\u003ePhiladelphia Enquirer\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eA taut, groundbreaking, and highly acclaimed 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 art\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eTen months after her mother’s death, the narrator of \u003cem\u003eThe Hero of This Book\u003c\/em\u003e 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe narrator, 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Hero of This Book \u003c\/em\u003e 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.\u003c\/p\u003e | \u003cp\u003e“The question of what this work is—a novel or a memoir, a fiction or a fact—can’t be answered. Doesn’t matter. \u003cem\u003eThe Hero of This Book \u003c\/em\u003eis tender, funny, heartbreaking, philosophical. Elizabeth McCracken is a writer who always delights, and this is an exhilarating book.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eRumaan Alam, author of Leave the World Behind\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Transcending categories, McCracken’s novel-as-eulogy and meditation on writing and truth is mischievous, funny, canny, and deeply affecting.\" - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eBooklist (starred review)\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“I have long been a fan of McCracken’s fiction: her imagination! Her endlessly stellar and impressive sentences. But “The Hero of This Book” is a world all its own. McCracken hews closely to her own life, tracking the loss of her beloved mother and allowing the reader access to an extraordinary mind grappling in real time with what both a story and real lasting love might be. It’s funny as hell, brilliantly built, deeply felt, and the sentences remain incredible throughout.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eLos Angeles Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Readers who enjoy tales of quiet, internal reflection will find themselves right at home in this thoughtful exploration of the lived expe­rience of grief.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eBookPage\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“[Elizabeth McCracken] is one of my favorite contemporary novelists. . . [\u003cem\u003eThe Hero of This Book\u003c\/em\u003e] is funny, it’s sharp, the sentences are beautiful.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eEmma Straub on the Today Show\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“A crushing portrait of a woman grappling with grief, love, and the power of words.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eTime (A Must Read Book of 2022)\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Anyone who picks up this beautifully written account will recall someone they loved within the pages.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eWomen About Town\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“McCracken delivers a searing meditation on loss and the impossibility of depicting, in art, the entirety of a person.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eNew Yorker\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"An accounting of the self that refuses autobiography, a travelogue about being lost, a novel that is really a theory of fiction, an elegy that sidesteps solemnity: \u003cem\u003eThe Hero of This Book\u003c\/em\u003e brilliantly disarms our usual modes of thinking. Elizabeth McCracken is one of America’s finest writers, fascinating, inventive, and profound.\" - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eGarth Greenwell, author of Cleanness and What Belongs to You\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“The fictional (auto)biography packs a punch the deeper it goes, and by the end contains so much life, all but spilling from its pocket-sized pages.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eDavid Canfield, VanityFair.com\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“McCracken delivers a searing meditation on loss and the impossibility of depicting, in art, the entirety of a person.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe New Yorker\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Through McCracken’s intense analysis of both grief and rejuvenation, the tenderness of the child-parent bond is revealed and we’re reminded that the beauty in art and writing is continuous.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eWestport Magazine\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“[H]er words create an exquisite alchemy that makes a reader ready to follow her anywhere, believe every word she writes down. Is this book a novel or is it a memoir? It matters not at all. With every vital, potent sentence, McCracken conveys the electric and primal nature of that first fundamental love.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eJanice Y.K. Lee, New York Times Book Review (“Editors’ Choice”)\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“It's a joyful, wistful, funny tribute to a woman who may or may not (but probably was) inspired by the author's own parent, written with such loving detail that it is as if the reader is right there, part of the pair's tight family circle.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eOprah Daily\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Leave it to Elizabeth McCracken to refresh the genre of the parental tribute…This layered book is packed with consequence, with love, with funny observations, with reflections on writing and the risks of hurting yourself and others….Mission accomplished. Natalie Jacobson McCracken, 1935-2018, comes alive as a wonderful hero of this book — and so does her daughter for writing it.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eHeller McAlpin, NPR.ORG\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“\u003cem\u003eThe Hero of This Book \u003c\/em\u003eis simple and lovely. McCracken’s easy prose is a joy to read, right off the bat… remarkable.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eAssociated Press\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“\u003cem\u003eThe Hero of This Book \u003c\/em\u003edefies description. Just read it. . . Page by page, it’s the quiet story of an adult child mourning a parent. As a whole, it’s a map of how to love someone… With admirable candor, pragmatism and humor, McCracken gives us a confessional gift as she walks through the experience of processing loss.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Washington Post\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"[A] beautiful, timeless book about the heroes we lose and what still remains.\" - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eBookReporter.com\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Braided into McCracken’s gorgeously spiraling narrative is an expansive meditation on the act of writing and, intriguingly, the art of writing memoir….the novel assumes a hybrid quality that could be called autofiction but really is an homage to the art of great storytelling. Novel? Memoir? Who cares. It’s a great story, beautifully told.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eKirkus Reviews (starred)\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e“[The Hero of This Book]\u003c\/em\u003e sharply capture[s] a remarkable person, a big-hearted, teensy woman who walked with crutches all her life, adored the theater, and lived in squalor because she couldn’t bear to throw anything away. . . . It’s a pointillist portrait, made up of closely-observed detail. . . . And at every turn, McCracken puckishly undercuts our expectations about the way a book like this should work.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eDan Kois, Slate\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Readers who delight in forthright and fearless stories of complicated women, told through the eyes of other complicated women, are sure to find joy in McCracken’s new book. Those who have walked with the memory of a loved one will find solace in the narrator’s final revelation—that the hero of the book and the storyteller remain forever connected, as neither will let the other go.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003ePloughshares\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“How reassuring it is to have writers like Elizabeth McCracken among us. She has no interest in gaining a few yards on the field. Frontiers do not interest her. Her fiction does not offer us a map. She trusts that her real readers are not interested in being delivered to the destination. Her specialty is the interior, and the interior is vast. We must bring our own compasses, emotional and aesthetic.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eYiyun Li, Harper’s Magazine\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“This compact, wise, heartfelt book is another sign that McCracken continues to do it right.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eMinneapolis Star Tribune\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“[A] beguiling meditation on family, grief, and caretaking that also addresses the burdens of storytelling: how much freedom you have — or don’t — to write about family members after they’re gone. With infinite freedom to invent, McCracken sparkles.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eBoston Globe\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Ecco","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44890510688485,"sku":"NP9780062971296","price":18.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780062971296.jpg?v=1730233455","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/the-hero-of-this-book-a-novel-isbn-9780062971296","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}