I adored this short story collection which featured a host of eccentric characters navigating tricky family relationships. I found myself longing to spend more time with nearly every character, and in one sense, I got my wish: the spine that holds these dozen stories together is those featuring Jack and Sadie, whom we visit at different points in their relationship throughout the book. Reading this felt like an emotional roller coaster; McCracken left me breathless as her characters' thoughts and actions elicited giggles and then gasps, often not just in the same story but on the same page. Her style feels deceptively light, as this book goes to hard places, examining depression, suicide, aging, and a host of terrible things happening to children. Yet I didn't want to put it down.

In this novel written as a memoir, Elizabeth McCracken, (or perhaps more accurately, the character that we feel is Elizabeth McCracken, shares about her larger-than-life mother, the titular hero of this book. She begins her story in summer 2019, one year after her mother died: she's traveled to London, a place that holds many memories of the trips McCracken and her mother once traveled to together. She interweaves stories from her mother’s life, including her experience of disability, with her present day narrative of experiencing London without her now. Through her insightful anecdotes and introspective reflections, McCracken makes you wish you’d had the chance to know the complicated, charming, occasionally infuriating woman that was her mother.