Overview

A taut, bighearted new novel from bestselling and award-winning author Elizabeth McCracken about a daughter's relationship with her larger-than-life mother—and all that is left behind as one generation moves to the next

Over the course of one weekend in London, a woman, "trying to decide what I thought about my life," winds up wrestling with the memory of her mother. Her mother—who had also loved to visit London—died ten months earlier, but her presence is in no way diminished by her death.

In The Hero of This Book, Elizabeth McCracken tracks a daughter's relationship with her larger-than-life mother. At every turn the narrator is confronted by the past—remembered conversations, the days the two of them spent wandering through museums or going to the theater—playing alongside questions of the future: back in New England, the family home is now for sale, its considerable contents already winnowed.

But the messy detritus of an...