Book info

• Title A Heart That Works
• Author Rob Delaney
• Year 2022
• Genre Memoir

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.

Thoughts

It’s hard to review this book because it’s beautiful but of course, completely brutal. Rob writes with such honesty and humour and compassion and rage and everything you can imagine… although obviously you just can’t imagine it. An absolute must read.

Rating: 5 / 5