An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination
Elizabeth McCracken
An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination
A prize-winning, successful novelist in her 30s, Elizabeth McCracken was happy to be an itinerant writer and self-proclaimed spinster. Then she fell in love, got married, and continued her life of writing, travelling, and teaching with her husband. Two years ago, she found herself in a remote part of France, waiting for the birth of her first child. This book is about what happens next. In the ninth month of her pregnancy, a baby is lost. Just over a year later, a baby is born. In a profoundly moving display of humour, heart, and unfailing generosity, McCracken tenderly presents her story: a story of true love and unfathomable sadness, of courageous recovery and bittersweet moments, of steadfast memories and deep affection. Grief walks through these pages of this remarkable book, but so do happiness and hope.
4.5 out of 5 based on 3 reviews
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Omniscore:
|
| Classification |
Non-fiction |
| Genre |
Family & Lifestyle, Biography |
| Format |
Hardback |
| Pages |
224 |
| RRP |
£14.99 |
| Date of Publication |
April 2009 |
| ISBN |
978-0224087100 |
| Publisher |
Jonathan Cape |
| |
A prize-winning, successful novelist in her 30s, Elizabeth McCracken was happy to be an itinerant writer and self-proclaimed spinster. Then she fell in love, got married, and continued her life of writing, travelling, and teaching with her husband. Two years ago, she found herself in a remote part of France, waiting for the birth of her first child. This book is about what happens next. In the ninth month of her pregnancy, a baby is lost. Just over a year later, a baby is born. In a profoundly moving display of humour, heart, and unfailing generosity, McCracken tenderly presents her story: a story of true love and unfathomable sadness, of courageous recovery and bittersweet moments, of steadfast memories and deep affection. Grief walks through these pages of this remarkable book, but so do happiness and hope.
Read the first chapter on the New York Times website
Reviews
The Observer
Hephzibah Anderson
“[A] remarkable memoir, whose pithy humour manages to convey tenderness as well as scalding anguish... [McCracken manages the] complex task of delivering a grief memoir that fuses the immediacy readers crave from the genre with all the reflective, consoling depth of fiction.”
12/04/2009
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The Los Angeles Times
Susan Salter Reynolds
“This is an intimate book -- McCracken does not spare us her anger, fear, frustration or despondency. 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. Writing, as every fiction writer who ever created a character knows, is a vivid, powerful, even multidimensional way to keep the ones we love alive.”
07/09/2008
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The New York Times
Lucinda Rosenfeld
“[McCracken] applies honesty, wisdom and even wit to a painful event... [She] even gives Dorothy Parker a run for quotable drollness with lines like “I’ve never gotten over my discomfort at other people’s discomfort.” Yet, ultimately, “An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination” is sad, at times even tear-inducing, since McCracken offers an unstinting account of her grief and the outlying emotions it engenders...”
03/10/2008
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