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, memory, and art Ten months after her mother’s death, the narrator of  The Hero of This Book  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 for sale, its considerable contents already winnowed. The woman, 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. The Hero of This Book  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. “The question of what this work is—a novel or a memoir, a fiction or a fact—can’t be answered. Doesn’t matter. The Hero of This Book is tender, funny, heartbreaking, philosophical. Elizabeth McCracken is a writer who always delights, and this is an exhilarating book.” - Rumaan Alam, author of Leave the World Behind "Transcending categories, McCracken’s novel-as-eulogy and meditation on writing and truth is mischievous, funny, canny, and deeply affecting." - Booklist (starred review) “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.” - Los Angeles Times “Readers who enjoy tales of quiet, internal reflection will find themselves right at home in this thoughtful exploration of the lived expe­rience of grief.” - BookPage “[Elizabeth McCracken] is one of my favorite contemporary novelists. . . [ The Hero of This Book ] is funny, it’s sharp, the sentences are beautiful.” - Emma Straub on the Today Show “A crushing portrait of a woman grappling with grief, love, and the power of words.” - Time (A Must Read Book of 2022) “Anyone who picks up this beautifully written account will recall someone they loved within the pages.” - Women About Town “McCracken delivers a searing meditation on loss and the impossibility of depicting, in art, the entirety of a person.” - New Yorker "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: The Hero of This Book brilliantly disarms our usual modes of thinking. Elizabeth McCracken is one of America’s finest writers, fascinating, inventive, and profound." - Garth Greenwell, author of Cleanness and What Belongs to You “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.” - David Canfield, VanityFair.com “McCracken delivers a searing meditation on loss and the impossibility of depicting, in art, the entirety of a person.” - The New Yorker “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.” - Westport Magazine “[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.” - Janice Y.K. Lee, New York Times Book Review (“Editors’ Choice”) “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.” - Oprah Daily “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 refle