RaveThe Washington PostI loved Elizabeth McCracken’s new novel, The Hero of This Book, and hate to deprive people of the chance to dive unknowingly into something wonderful. So feel free to stop here and pretend I am pressing the slim hardcover into your hands ... I will warn you that the book is hard to categorize. It doesn’t have a splashy hook, and it purposefully defies genre. 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 ... Seamless yet dizzying jumps through time mirror the tailspin of bereavement, how our brains scramble to recall images of a loved one; how something as insignificant as a sandwich can trigger an avalanche of memory ... With admirable candor, pragmatism and humor, McCracken gives us a confessional gift as she walks through the experience of processing loss ... McCracken’s book is a grounded work of adulthood, of loss in its reasonable time and the reality of what we’re left with if granted the privilege to march through a life that unfolds in good cadence.
