Elizabeth McCracken
The Hero of this Book by Elizabeth McCracken blurs the line between memoir and novel. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter which parts are which because the combination, context, and execution make for compelling reading.
The fictionalized memoir (for lack of a better term) opens with the unnamed narrator wandering through the streets of London. She retraces the steps she took with her mother during their last visit together before her mother’s death. As she ambles along, recognizing familiar haunts, she describes her quirky parents with loving tenderness, events in her childhood, and lists the accumulated jumble of possessions in her parents’ home. But she always returns to her primary focus—to portray her mother in all her delightful idiosyncrasies.
The narrator’s mother, Natalie McCracken, suffers from a life-long, chronic disability that gradually renders her immobile. But she never lets that deter her. She has opinions on just about everything and stubbornly refuses to concede defeat even when the situation calls for it. She is portrayed as a flurry of mental and physical activity in spite of her mobility challenges. The narrator describes her zipping through the streets of London on her scooter. What emerges from this loving portrayal is a strong, fiercely determined, witty, eccentric, and doggedly private woman who embraces life with relish.
Threaded throughout this portrayal of her mother, Elizabeth McCracken, spontaneously tosses out tips on writing with tongue in cheek humor. She interrogates the issue of genre, blurring the distinction between memoir and fiction. She adamantly denies she is writing a memoir but then seems to scramble back toward it while suggesting fiction seldom differs from autobiography.
In this strange hybrid of a book, peppered with a delightful sense of humor, Elizabeth McCracken has painted a vivid portrait of an extraordinary woman who may—or may not be—her beloved mother. Whether the portrait is real or fictional is beside the point. What matters is McCracken has vividly captured a woman with an indomitable spirit. And she has accomplished what may or may not be a tribute to her actual mother without dipping her toe in maudlin sentimentality.