Bedtime Story

- Blurb -

From the best-selling author of The Tall Man and The Arsonist, a personal tale about death, life and the enchantment of stories. With illustrations by Anna Walker. Let me tell you a story. . . When Chloe Hooper' s partner is diagnosed with a rare and aggressive illness, she has to find a way to tell their two young sons. By instinct, she turns to the bookshelf. Can the news be broken as a bedtime tale? Is there a perfect book to prepare children for loss? Hooper embarks on a quest to find what practical lessons children' s literature-with its innocent orphans and evil adults, magic, monsters and anthropomorphic animals-can teach about grief and resilience in real life. As she discovers, ' the right words are an incantation, a spell of hope for the future. ' From the Brothers Grimm to Frances Hodgson Burnett and Tolkien and Dahl-all of whom suffered childhood bereavements-she follows the breadcrumbs of the world' s favourite authors, searching for the deep wisdom in their books and lives. Both memoir and manual, Bedtime Story is stunningly illustrated by the New York Times award-winning Anna Walker. In an age of worldwide uncertainty, here is a profound and moving exploration of the dark and light of storytelling. ' This book is a miracle of light and meaning-making from one of our finest writers. Venturing inward with extraordinary grace, Hooper explores - and extends - the long literary line surging with our deepest inherited wisdom about how to embrace our finite lives. The result is nothing less than the hero' s journey we have been collectively starving for. Telling you this is like trying to describe the sun; it is a book so powerful and beautiful - so utterly its own - that it can only be experienced directly. ' Sarah Krasnostein, author of The Trauma Cleaner and The Believer