Synopses & Reviews
"This is the happiest story in the world with the saddest ending," writes Elizabeth McCracken in her powerful, inspiring memoir. A prize-winning, successful novelist in her 30s, McCracken was happy to be an itinerant writer and self-proclaimed spinster. But suddenly she fell in love, got married, and two years ago was living in a remote part of France, working on her novel, and waiting for the birth of her first child.
This book is about what happened next. In her ninth month of pregnancy, she learned that her baby boy had died. How do you deal with and recover from this kind of loss? Of course you don't but you go on. And if you have ever experienced loss or love someone who has, the company of this remarkable book will help you go on.
With humor and warmth and unfailing generosity, McCracken considers the nature of love and grief. She opens her heart and leaves all of ours the richer for it.
Review
"McCracken manages to limn her poignant story with touches of humor, empathy toward those who struggled to express their awkward sympathy, and, ultimately, hope, in the form of the baby asleep in her lap as she types, one-handed." Booklist
Review
"[McCracken] applies honesty, wisdom and even wit to a painful event." New York Times
Review
"This is an intimate book....It is also a wildly important book we do not live alongside the dead the way we ought to: We sweep them off to the margins as quickly as possible." Los Angeles Times
Review
"This is not a book about the lighter side of losing a child, it never seeks to trivialize her loss, but it does show how honesty and humor can help people survive grief." San Francisco Chronicle
Review
"The book is, on the one hand, an incisive look at grief and the terrible weight of memory. But it's also a love story a paean to McCracken's husband and both of their children." Boston Globe
Review
"Some readers shy away from books like this. I have been told about my own memoir that it is too hard to read. But I urge people to read McCracken's book, and other books that help all of us navigate life and the things it throws at us." Ann Hood, Providence Journal
Review
"[McCracken's] devastating black humor punctuates the narrative." Minneapolis Star Tribune
Review
"There's a finely tuned tension between romanticism and realism in her personality and prose." San Diego Union-Tribune
About the Author
Elizabeth McCracken is the author of The Giant's House, which was nominated for the National Book Award; Niagara Falls All Over Again, winner of the PEN/Winship Award; and Here's Your Hat What's Your Hurry, a collection of stories. She has received grants and awards from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, the National Endowment for the Arts, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the American Academy in Berlin.