A Heart That Works

Amazon.com Review\nAn Amazon Best Book of December 2022: Rob Delaney is known for his laugh-out-loud performance on Catastrophe, but this memoir isn’t about the celebrity limelight. It’s about the death of his third child, Henry. It’s about the fourteen months that “gorgeous” baby Henry spent in the hospital for a brain tumor and how he and his family cope(d). Delaney shares his unabashed emotions—his rage and anger, humility and humor, anguish and confusion, and the resounding euphoria of being lovestruck by his son—with such raw honesty, that his feelings tumble together to create a portrait of what it is to live and what it is to love. While I can promise that your eyes will well with tears for Delaney and his family, I can also promise that your heart will soar with the twinkly wonder of parenthood and humanity. A Heart That Works is a book that belongs on your bedside table or on a shelf next to Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking—it’s that memorable, and that affecting. —Al Woodworth, Amazon Editor\nNew York Times bestseller * The New Yorker Best Books of 2022 * Entertainment Weekly Best Books of 2022 * USA Today Best Books of 2022 * Time 100 Must-Read Books of 2022 * Mother Jones Books We Needed in 2022 * People Fall Must Read * 2022 BuzzFeed Fall Reading pick\nA visceral and deeply personal memoir by the star of the Amazon Prime series Catastrophe, about love, loss, and fatherhood.
In 2016, Rob Delaney’s one-year-old son, Henry, was diagnosed with a brain tumor. The family had moved from Los Angeles to London with their two young boys when Rob’s wife was pregnant with Henry, their third. The move was an adventure and a challenge that would bind them even more tightly together as they navigated the novelty of London, the culture clashes, and the funhouse experience of Rob’s fame—thanks to his role as co-creator and co-star of the hit series Catastrophe. Henry’s illness was a cataclysm that changed everything about their lives. Amid the hospital routine, surgeries, and brutal treatments, they found a newfound community of nurses, aides, caregivers, and fellow parents contending with the unthinkable. Two years later, Henry died, and his family watched their world fall away to reveal the things that matter most.
A Heart That Works is Delaney’s intimate, unflinching, and fiercely funny exploration of what happened – from the harrowing illness to the vivid, bodily impact of grief and the blind, furious rage that followed through to the forceful, unstoppable love that remains. In the madness of his grief, Delaney grapples with the fragile miracle of life, the mysteries of death, and the question of purpose for those left behind.
Delaney’s memoir—profound, painful, full of emotion, and bracingly honest—offers solace to those who have faced devastation and shows us how grace may appear even in the darkest times.