An Exact Replica Of A Figment Of My Imagination

Download or read book An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination written by Elizabeth McCracken and published by Hachette+ORM. This book was released on 2008-09-10 with total page 116 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "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.

Download or read book An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination written by Elizabeth McCracken and published by Random House. This book was released on 2011-09-30 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'This is the happiest story in the world with the saddest ending.' 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.

Download or read book Niagara Falls All Over Again written by Elizabeth McCracken and published by Delta. This book was released on 2002-11-26 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By turns graceful and knowing, funny and moving, Niagara Falls All Over Again is the latest masterwork by National Book Award finalist and author of The Giant’s House, Elizabeth McCracken. Spanning the waning years of vaudeville and the golden age of Hollywood, Niagara Falls All Over Again chronicles a flawed, passionate friendship over thirty years, weaving a powerful story of family and love, grief and loss. In it, McCracken introduces her most singular and affecting hero: Mose Sharp — son, brother, husband, father, friend ... and straight man to the fat guy in baggy pants who utterly transforms his life. To the paying public, Mose Sharp was the arch, colorless half of the comedy team Carter and Sharp. To his partner, he was charmed and charming, a confirmed bachelor who never failed at love and romance. To his father and sisters, Mose was a prodigal son. And in his own heart and soul, he would always be a boy who once had a chance to save a girl’s life — a girl who would be his first, and greatest, loss. Born into a Jewish family in small-town Iowa, the only boy among six sisters, Mose Sharp couldn’t leave home soon enough. By sixteen Mose had already joined the vaudeville circuit. But he knew one thing from the start: “I needed a partner,” he recalls. “I had always needed a partner.” Then, an ebullient, self-destructive comedian named Rocky Carter came crashing into his life — and a thirty-year partnership was born. But as the comedy team of Carter and Sharp thrived from the vaudeville backwaters to Broadway to Hollywood, a funny thing happened amid the laughter: It was Mose who had all the best lines offstage. Rocky would go through money, women, and wives in his restless search for love; Mose would settle down to a family life marked by fragile joy and wrenching tragedy. And soon, cracks were appearing in their complex relationship ... until one unforgivable act leads to another and a partnership begins to unravel. In a novel as daring as it is compassionate, Elizabeth McCracken introduces an indelibly drawn cast of characters — from Mose’s Iowa family to the vagabond friends, lovers, and competitors who share his dizzying journey — as she deftly explores the fragile structures that underlie love affairs and friendships, partnerships and families. An elegiac and uniquely American novel, Niagara Falls All Over Again is storytelling at its finest — and powerful proof that Elizabeth McCracken is one of the most dynamic and wholly original voices of her generation.

Download or read book The Souvenir Museum written by Elizabeth McCracken and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2023-01-26 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'One of my favourite writers' Nick Hornby One of the most acclaimed writers of our day, award-winning author Elizabeth McCracken is an undisputed virtuoso of the short story, and this new collection features her most vibrant and heartrending work to date. A recent widower and his adult son ferry to a craggy Scottish island in search of puffins. An actress who plays a children's game-show villainess ushers in the New Year with her deadbeat half-brother. And on a trip to a water park with their son, two fathers each confront a deep-rooted personal fear. With sentences that crackle and spark and showcase her trademark wit, McCracken shows how the mysterious bonds of family are tested, transformed, fractured, and fortified. 'McCracken has a gift for spotting the comic potential in situations many of us have endured... Her prose is stippled with just-so observations' Observer 'McCracken is a totally assured performer- even seemingly throwaway perceptions are often memorably poetic, and there is a hint of melancholy under the comedy' Sunday Times 'This incisive, warm-blooded collection of stories is populated by outsiders... McCracken illuminates qualities of human nature through fragments of her characters' lives' New Yorker

Download or read book Thunderstruck & Other Stories written by Elizabeth McCracken and published by Random House. This book was released on 2014-06-05 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the author of the beloved novel The Giant's House - finalist for the National Book Award - comes a beautiful new story collection, her first in twenty years. Laced through with humour, empathy, and rare and magical descriptive powers these nine vibrant stories navigate the fragile space between love and loneliness. In 'Property', a young scholar, grieving the sudden death of his wife, decides to refurbish the Maine rental house they were to share together by removing his landlord's possessions. In 'Peter Elroy: A Documentary by Ian Casey', the household of a successful filmmaker is visited years later by his famous first subject, whose trust he betrayed. And in the unforgettable title story, a family makes a quixotic decision to flee to Paris for a summer, only to find their lives altered in an unimaginable way by their teenage daughter's risky behaviour. In Elizabeth McCracken's universe, heartache is always interwoven with strange, charmed moments of joy - an unexpected conversation with small children, the gift of a parrot with a bad French accent - that remind us of the wonder and mystery of being alive. Thunderstruck & Other Stories shows this inimitable writer working at the full height of her powers.

Download or read book They Were Still Born written by Janel C. Atlas, editor of They Were Still Born: Personal Stories About Stillbirth and published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. This book was released on 2010-12-16 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The stories in this book are not easily told, but for the many thousands of families each year who endure the silent tragedy of a stillbirth, they offer a welcome voice of solidarity and guidance. Janel Atlas, familiar with the pain of losing a child, has selected here the firsthand accounts of not only mothers, but also fathers, and grandparents, all of whom have reached out to offer readers the comfort of knowing they are not alone on this painful path. Through these stories, the writers found validation of their babies' lives and have now shared the same gift with others, inspiring readers to write their own as well as showing them how to do so.

Download or read book Bowlaway written by Elizabeth McCracken and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2019-02-05 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A sweeping and enchanting new novel from the widely beloved, award-winning author Elizabeth McCracken about three generations of an unconventional New England family who own and operate a candlepin bowling alley From the day she is discovered unconscious in a New England cemetery at the turn of the twentieth century—nothing but a bowling ball, a candlepin, and fifteen pounds of gold on her person—Bertha Truitt is an enigma to everyone in Salford, Massachusetts. She has no past to speak of, or at least none she is willing to reveal, and her mysterious origin scandalizes and intrigues the townspeople, as does her choice to marry and start a family with Leviticus Sprague, the doctor who revived her. But Bertha is plucky, tenacious, and entrepreneurial, and the bowling alley she opens quickly becomes Salford’s most defining landmark—with Bertha its most notable resident. When Bertha dies in a freak accident, her past resurfaces in the form of a heretofore-unheard-of son, who arrives in Salford claiming he is heir apparent to Truitt Alleys. Soon it becomes clear that, even in her death, Bertha’s defining spirit and the implications of her obfuscations live on, infecting and affecting future generations through inheritance battles, murky paternities, and hidden wills. In a voice laced with insight and her signature sharp humor, Elizabeth McCracken has written an epic family saga set against the backdrop of twentieth-century America. Bowlaway is both a stunning feat of language and a brilliant unraveling of a family’s myths and secrets, its passions and betrayals, and the ties that bind and the rifts that divide.