The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop

Ten months after her mother’s death, the narrator of ‘The Hero of This Book’ takes a trip to London. The city was a favourite of her mother’s, and as the narrator walks from Clerkenwell to the London Eye, from Tate Modern to the Bridge Theatre, she finds herself reflecting on her mother’s life and their relationship. Thoughts of the past meld with questions of the future: back in New England, the family home is now for sale, its considerable contents already winnowed. The woman, a writer, recalls all that made her complicated mother extraordinary – her brilliant wit, her generosity, her unbelievable obstinacy, her sheer will in seizing life despite physical difficulties – and finds herself wondering how her mother had endured.