A Heart That Works: THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

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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. Reeling after 2-year-old Henry’s death from brain cancer, Delaney not only replays the facts for himself but also feels the urge to tell everyone else. This book is raw and heartbreaking and of course, since he’s a comedian, it’s just the right amount of funny. Plans to read hefty tomes on train trips to Somerset and Yorkshire were soon thwarted thanks to train strikes, and – given that my body clock soon adjusted to late nights and lie-ins – I no longer had the early hours of the morning to spend with my nose in a book.

I hope many will find the courage to read about this most difficult to think about subject and find how love and kindness and just being there can make a difference for the people, families involved. My disabled sister, who died in 2020, also required regular suctioning; it is amazing how profoundly one misses the mind-numbingly tedious aspects of care. To make things almost impossible, more death visits the Delaney family, and it makes the sadness almost insurmountable. Her reporting and commentary on the royals has been featured on the Today show, NBC News, BBC’s Newsnight, CBS Sunday Mornings, and more. Delaney takes us from his move from the US to London to make Catastrophe – with his pregnant wife Leah and their two other sons – through the diagnosis and two years of illness all the way to Henry’s death.Sometimes these rapid leaps of register coincide, to powerful effect, with Delaney’s swerves through time. To leave it out is to miss the point entirely, so I appreciate (such a weak word) the honesty in this book for mashing them both together and saying, "You might never know this, I hope you never know this, but THIS is what it is. It is pages and pages of blog postings and stand up routines about how Henry’s death affected Rob Delaney and how much Rob Delaney grieved and how much Rob Delaney loved his family. I can’t remember the last time I plowed through a prose book in one-sitting, but I could not put this one down.

That he is able to do so with such guiltless, funny and disarming honesty is testament to the profound effect of Henry’s short but meaningful life. Just take your badge and car park ticket to the parking attendant office at the entrance to the car park for validation before you leave.Though it is the downer that Delaney was shooting for, there are plenty of moments of pure joy distilled into his descriptions of Henry, like the songs he loved to dance to and his expressive smile. I think we’ll both be happier when the book has just been out there for a while because my opinion is like, don’t talk to my wife about a book about her son. People don’t appreciate just how addictively wonderful it is to help someone you love … Rob Delaney. I was reminded, up to a point, of Jayson Greene’s magnificent memoir about his young daughter’s death, “ Once More We Saw Stars.

Ted Cruz) that led her to coveted White House internships and eventual positions in the Office of Legislative Affairs and with Meadows. The book draws its title from a lyric by Juliana Hatfield, which also serves as an epigraph for the book: “A heart that hurts is a heart that works. And you will laugh, because this book is often miraculously funny — a fact that won’t surprise fans of Delaney’s stand-up comedy or the television series “ Catastrophe,” which he created with Sharon Horgan. They’ll kick you out if they need to, but don’t waste their time by saying, ‘If there’s anything I can do, just let me know. Since then, I have felt a connection with this family I have never met, and I always look for Rob’s words about his son and about grief.

I don’t know what to say about this book… I cannot imagine the suffering and all the pain that this family went through, and I hope I will never experience something similar. The riff on hospital layouts comes early, before Henry is sick; Delaney is visiting Whittington, the hospital where Henry will be born, and, later in life, live.