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A Heart That Works: THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER as heard on R4's Desert Island Discs
Rob Delaney
Autobiography: arts & entertainment, Memoirs, Prose: non-fiction
The comedian and star of Catastrophe's devastatingly moving memoir about his young son's death
In this memoir of loss, acclaimed writer and comedian Rob Delaney grapples with the fragile miracle of life, the mysteries of death, and the question of purpose for those left behind.
When you're a parent and your child gets hurt or sick, you not only try to help them get better but you also labour under the general belief that you can help them get better. That's not always the case though. Sometimes the nurses and the doctors can't fix what's wrong. Sometimes children die.
Rob Delaney's beautiful, bright, gloriously alive son Henry died. He was one when he was diagnosed with a brain tumour. An experience beyond comprehension, but an experience Rob must share. Why does he feel compelled to talk about it, to write about it, to make people feel something like what he feels when he knows it will hurt them? Because, despite Henry's death, Rob still loves people. For that reason, he wants them to understand.
A Heart That Works is an intimate, unflinching and fiercely funny exploration of loss - from the harrowing illness to the vivid, bodily impact of grief and the blind, furious rage that follows, through to the forceful, unstoppable love that remains.
This is the story of what happens when you lose a child, and everything you discover about life in the process.
More books by Rob Delaney
Praise for A Heart That Works: THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER as heard on R4's Desert Island Discs
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This book is so rich with grief and love and pain and humor and an incandescent, purifying, flame-throwing wrath. Though Delaney can't bring Henry back, he can - and does - show enough of him to the world to make a reader see him a little bit, know him a little bit, and fully love him. What an unbelievable gift
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What a read. Its beauty and pain and humour and anger will help many people. This is a beautiful monument
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The weaving of the joy and pain, the love and loss, the absurdity of grief, is done so beautifully. It feels like a message in a bottle, a despatch, a communication from the depths of suffering and despair that ultimately brings a message of great hope
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It is a gift, it's an immense piece of work. It's brilliant. It's needed, like a deep, physical draught of something strong and cold
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I could have read about Henry for a thousand pages. It is impossible not to share in Delaney's tenderness, his attention, his anger, his night-black humor, and impossible not to see his son through his eyes: loved, learning, smiling ecstatically. I will turn to this book again and again, to feel deeply and to learn about this world from Henry
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Warm and vivid and heartbreaking, humane and somehow even funny, Rob Delaney has written a very special tribute to a very special boy, and a beautiful treatise on what really matters in life
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I don't think I've ever read anything before that captures the enormity and power of parental love, how radical it is, how transformative and total
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I love this book, and it is a tough ride, filled with grace and beauty and unimaginable pain. I cried a number of times, laughed a lot, grieved with the Delaneys, and underlined so many moments of courage, exposure, humanity and the deepest meaning. All I can say is Wow
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