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Material Type | Library | Call Number | Item Barcode | Location |
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Book | Searching... Andover - Memorial Hall Library | BIOGRAPHY DELANEY, RO. | 31330009283437 | Searching... Unknown |
Book | Searching... Amesbury Public Library | 306.874 DEL | 32114002749068 | Searching... Unknown |
Book | Searching... Billerica Public Library | B/DELANEY | 33934004594694 | Searching... Unknown |
Book | Searching... Boxford Town Library | B DELANEY | 32115002198081 | Searching... Unknown |
Book | Searching... Burlington Public Library | BIO DELANEY R | 32116003937634 | Searching... Unknown |
Book | Searching... Carlisle - Gleason Public Library | BIO DELANEY | 32117002157802 | Searching... Unknown |
Book | Searching... Chelmsford Public Library | BIOG/DELANEY | 31480011628622 | Searching... Unknown |
Book | Searching... Dracut - Moses Greeley Parker Memorial Library | BIO/DELANEY, R. | 31482003020230 | Searching... Unknown |
Book | Searching... Dunstable Free Public Library | B DEL | 32118001088808 | Searching... Unknown |
Book | Searching... Georgetown Peabody Library | 155.937 DELANEY | 32120001412145 | Searching... Unknown |
Book | Searching... Groton Public Library | BIO DELANEY | 37003701986581 | Searching... Unknown |
Book | Searching... Hamilton-Wenham Public Library | B DELANEY, ROB | 30470002056108 | Searching... Unknown |
Book | Searching... Haverhill Public Library | BIOG/DELANEY R | 31479007585622 | Searching... Unknown |
Book | Searching... Ipswich Public Library | 921 DELANEY, ROB | 32122002990020 | Searching... Unknown |
Book | Searching... Lowell - Pollard Memorial Library | B DELANEY, R. | 31481005646893 | Searching... Unknown |
Book | Searching... Manchester-by-the-Sea Public Library | B DELANEY 2022 | 32124002107308 | Searching... Unknown |
Book | Searching... Methuen - Nevins Memorial Library | B DELANEY, R. | 31548003464592 | Searching... Unknown |
Book | Searching... Newburyport Public Library | BIOGRAPHY DELANEY R | 32128004145539 | Searching... Unknown |
Book | Searching... North Andover - Stevens Memorial Library | BIO DELANEY | 31478010217587 | Searching... Unknown |
Book | Searching... North Reading - Flint Memorial Library | BIOGRAPHY DELANEY R | 31550002547203 | Searching... Unknown |
Book | Searching... Rockport Public Library | B DELANEY | 32129002546082 | Searching... Unknown |
Book | Searching... Tewksbury Public Library | MEMOIR / GRIEF & LOSS / DELANEY | 32132003359570 | Searching... Unknown |
New books | Searching... Tewksbury Public Library | XX(1508111.21) | 1508111-21001 | Searching... Unknown |
Book | Searching... Topsfield Town Library | BIO DELANEY | 32133002673185 | Searching... Unknown |
Book | Searching... Tyngsborough Public Library | B/DELAN | 32137002192070 | Searching... Unknown |
Book | Searching... West Newbury - G.A.R. Memorial Library | 92 DELANEY | 32135001583059 | Searching... Unknown |
Book | Searching... Westford - J.V. Fletcher Library | B DELANEY | 31990005238014 | Searching... Unknown |
Book | Searching... Wilmington Memorial Library | BIOGRAPHY DELANEY | 32136003560962 | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
New York Times Bestseller * New Yorker Best Books of 2022 * Entertainment Weekly Best Books of 2022 * USA Today Best Books of 2022 * Time 100 Must-Read Books of 2022 * Mother Jones Books We Needed in 2022 * People Fall Must Read * 2022 BuzzFeed Fall Reading Pick * New York Post Best Books of 2022 * New York Times Editors' Choice
This is the story of what happens when you lose a child, and everything you discover about life in the process, by the star of the Amazon Prime series Catastrophe .
In 2018, Rob Delaney's two-year-old son, Henry, died of a brain tumor. A Heart That Works is Delaney's intimate, unflinching, and at times fiercely funny exploration of Henry's beautiful, bright life and the devastation of his loss--from the harrowing illness to the vivid, bodily impact of grief and the blind, furious rage that followed through to the forceful, unstoppable love that remains. In the madness of his grief, Delaney grapples with the fragile miracle of life, the mysteries of death, and the question of purpose for those left behind.
Profound, painful, full of emotion, and bracingly honest, Delaney's memoir offers solace to those who have faced devastation and shows us how grace may appear even in the darkest times.
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Delaney (Rob Delaney: Mother. Wife. Sister. Human. Warrior. Falcon. Yardstick. Turban. Cabbage.), cocreator and costar of the sitcom Catastrophe, recounts the death of his toddler son, Henry, and the aftermath in this heartrending memoir. In 2014, Delaney and his wife, Leah, moved to London for his work; two years later, Henry was born. Toward the end of his first year, Henry underwent an MRI, and a brain surgeon discovered a tumor near his brain stem. Following a successful surgery to remove the tumor, Henry lost the ability to swallow and received a tracheostomy, and health complications kept him in the hospital for 14 months. After Henry finally went home, Delaney writes, he basked in the "unalloyed beauty of his personality." But it was a short-lived idyll: Henry's cancer returned, and he died several months later, at home in Leah's arms. Delaney is reflective ("It physically pained me to sign the consent forms each time he got chemo"), and his raw emotionality captures the enormity of his loss ("I was ready to love this boy forever"). Profound, crushing, and wrenching, this account of a father's love takes the full measure of grief. Agent: Pilar Queen, UTA. (Nov.)
Guardian Review
The first homework our English teacher set us at secondary school was to write a short essay jauntily entitled "The Day That Changed My Life". Among various 12-year-olds' accounts of finding medieval coins on a beach and performing a clarinet solo on a skiing holiday, I wrote five pages on the death of my father two years previously. I hadn't written about it before, hadn't really spoken much about it, and was a little disappointed when, in his comments at the end of the piece, my teacher explained that he had demurred from giving it a mark. It felt wrong, he wrote, to be examining such a topic with too critical an eye. I didn't agree. It had felt fantastic to write it, to see the most significant event of my young life given shape, structure, even story, however inelegantly. I had wanted to know how it made other people feel. Maybe it would spark a dialogue with my new classmates. Instead it felt like my teacher had turned away from the messiness of it all, leaving me further stranded in that remote emotional cottage-in-the-woods where all young bereaved people find themselves. I also knew, though, that he was trying to be kind. And that if he had put a red pen through my description of my family's howls of pain by the sitting room windows and scribbled "Get to the point!" in the margin, I might have asked to change schools. That's the problem with people in grief. Can't do right for doing wrong. All of which is to ask the question: is it possible to write a critical review of someone who is bearing witness, in writing, to the incalculable pain and emotional chaos suffered on the death of their young child? Does the weight of its emotional punch do away with the need for an anaemic assessment of a writer's craft? Or is the very act of writing something so transgressively raw and open, a cry for these experiences to be normalised - and therefore a request for it to be treated like any other book? I don't know. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be mean if it were awful, at least publicly. Which makes me worry that I'll sound disingenuous when I say that it gives me great pleasure, and no pleasure at all, to write that Rob Delaney's new book is both overwhelmingly moving and, in any other way you might assess a book, excellent. It is about Delaney's son, Henry. It tells of Henry's birth: Delaney and his wife Leah had just moved to London with their two older sons to begin filming the first series of Catastrophe, the show that was to make his name in the UK. It tells of Henry's illness: before his first birthday, he is diagnosed with a brain tumour after some weeks of vomiting and subsequent misdiagnoses. It tells of the attempts to cure Henry: he is operated on at Great Ormond Street hospital for children and is largely there, or at the Whittington hospital, for the next year of his life. And it describes Henry's death - from his parents' decision to not torture him with more treatment when his cancer returns, to his removal from their room, cold, in a body bag. It is unbearable, in the sense that the situation Delaney and his family find themselves in - the pain he describes wittily, unflinchingly, confrontationally - is greater than most of us have yet to bear, and try not to allow ourselves to contemplate. And yet it is, as one might imagine, vital and very, very funny. When his father-in-law hugs them, post Henry's diagnosis, and wishes that he could be ill instead, Delaney doesn't hesitate: "We do too, Richard." The image of the Delaney family dressed as skeletons on Halloween in the Great Ormond Street paediatric oncology ward suggests a family united in an appreciation for the curative effects of the darkest kind of humour, just as Delaney now finds great peace, even delight, in art that horrifies or depresses others - the songs of Elliott Smith, the film Midsommar. And he is self-aware about just how unreasonable grief has made him. He's furious when a man tries to comfort him with the fact that his grandfather had survived a brain tumour: "Grandfathers are supposed to get tumours and die! That's their job!" Perhaps because Henry died on his father's birthday, having only had two himself, Delaney now can't believe adults are so needy as to still celebrate them. If he hears co-workers are surprising a colleague with cake at 4pm, he "will go take a shit at 3.57". Most moving, though, are Delaney's descriptions of the privilege of care. People don't appreciate just how addictively wonderful it is to help someone you love, however exhausting, however devastating. Almost unbelievably, Delaney's much-loved brother-in-law took his own life the year after Henry was diagnosed, following a period of depression. The bonding effect of his and his sister's mutual agonies, the way their families responded with support, childcare, travel, listening, presence - these are the small actions, you feel, that make Delaney's heart still "work". His and Leah's relationship also deepens, strengthens and blossoms in extremis. When events fracture us, it is the love of others that binds us together again, however imperfectly. Those practical and physical expressions of love - the relatives who learn to clean Henry's tracheostomy or the calluses that develop on Delaney's fingers from operating his son's suctioning machine - are some of the most moving images of the book. My disabled sister, who died in 2020, also required regular suctioning; it is amazing how profoundly one misses the mind-numbingly tedious aspects of care. It's difficult for love to find similar active expression once that person is gone. For Delaney that practical activity was replaced, I imagine, by writing this book. And as much as I wish he hadn't had to write it, I am glad he did. Because such deaths do happen. And they largely happen in private. The reality of medical care, especially social and palliative care, is often shrouded in silence. Those engulfed in it, from workers to "clients", are often too tired, physically and emotionally, to shine a light on its strengths or its fault lines (although Delaney, an American, is full of praise and wonder at the very existence of the NHS). Those who don't need it don't like to hear about it. Indeed, the more severe the pain, the more desperate the need of others to avoid it - they don't want to intrude or don't know how to help, scared of confronting their own and their children's mortality. And those suffering stay in their cottages in the woods. So as much as Delaney is writing to offer succour and companionship to people who have experienced something similar, he is also rallying those who haven't to understand and listen, and to chisel away at the stigma of pain. That he is able to do so with such guiltless, funny and disarming honesty is testament to the profound effect of Henry's short but meaningful life.
Kirkus Review
A devastatingly candid account of a parent's grief that will have readers laughing and crying in equal measure. Delaney is no stranger to balancing grief and humor, and it shows in this heartbreaking yet often darkly funny recounting of how he lost his third son, Henry, to brain cancer. The author's work as a writer and actor in the dramedy series Catastrophe clearly primed him to share these poignant recollections. Few would attempt to bring humor and levity to such an unbearably sad story, but Delaney manages to do so with grace, sincerity, and warmth. His ability to weave laughter into something so dark also makes the book accessible for a wide audience, as the author gives readers permission to fully absorb his family's story, to empathize and understand, without having to remain straight-faced and downcast. Throughout, Delaney includes playful but sincere asides: "Advice to people who have a friend or relative with a very sick kid: get right up their ass and go spend time with them. They'll kick you out if they need to, but don't waste their time by saying, 'If there's anything I can do, just let me know.' That's for you, not for them. You might as well yawn in their face while looking at something more exciting over their shoulder." The narrative takes place mostly in London and serves as a sharp criticism of the American health care system in comparison to the British National Health Service, underscoring the additional strain many families of sick children suffer in the U.S. It is also a tender tale of how a family can remain loving and connected during and after tragedy, and Delaney pulls no punches in highlighting his own perceived shortcomings as a father and husband throughout the unimaginable ordeal. His raw honesty and ability to inject humor into the narrative are both charming and refreshing. A heart-wrenching and impressively self-aware story of a father living through the death of his young child. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.