Spiegel & Grau has acquired North American rights to A Heart That Works, a memoir by actor Rob Delaney, from Meredith Miller at United Talent Agency, working in partnership with Avalon. SN: It seems like you have an incredibly supportive family all the way around. Were your wife and family on board with you writing this from the start, or was there ever a moment when your wife maybe said something like, “This is a wound I just don’t want you to open again”? I love how Delaney writes about Henry, always introducing him in words like 'my beautiful boy', forever reminding you how much he misses him. Overall, his writing flows well, and can be quite.. peppery, regarding cursing, if that's something that is important to you (if you can't curse when your child is dying, when can you?). When Henry finally dies, Delaney very specifically ropes off what he will and won't tell the reader:

A Heart That Works will be published in hardcover, eBook, and audiobook, read by the author, on November 29. The acquisition was announced byJulie Grau, Spiegel & Grau Co-CEO. 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. Read this entire book in one sitting. Cried all the way through apart from when I was bawling, rather than sobbing. Finished it and went straight upstairs to hug my son. What a story. Most moving, though, are Delaney’s descriptions of the privilege of care. People don’t appreciate just how addictively wonderful it is to help someone you love, however exhausting, however devastating. Almost unbelievably, Delaney’s much-loved brother-in-law took his own life the year after Henry was diagnosed, following a period of depression. The bonding effect of his and his sister’s mutual agonies, the way their families responded with support, childcare, travel, listening, presence – these are the small actions, you feel, that make Delaney’s heart still “work”. His and Leah’s relationship also deepens, strengthens and blossoms in extremis. When events fracture us, it is the love of others that binds us together again, however imperfectly. Those practical and physical expressions of love – the relatives who learn to clean Henry’s tracheostomy or the calluses that develop on Delaney’s fingers from operating his son’s suctioning machine – are some of the most moving images of the book. 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. It’s difficult for love to find similar active expression once that person is gone.This is a story about grief and death, parenthood and how things can go impossibly wrong. It is the story about a family but mostly about a father and his son. Rob Delaney is a wonderful man and this book tells tragic but heartfelt memoir of how he copes when his son is found to have a brain tumor. It is not easy reading but it is so beautiful. 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. This is the story of Henry’s short but so loved life, written beautifully by a father whose life was transformed first by cancer and then by grief.

Delaney runs the gamut of human emotions - love, happiness, fear, sadness, anger, despair, acceptance - and he does it with dark humour and grace. The book is a moving and intelligent reflection on life and on death more generally, and the fate that awaits us all at one time or another. Blue Badge holders and those with access requirements can be dropped off on the Queen Elizabeth Hall Slip Road off Belvedere Road (the road between the Royal Festival Hall and the Hayward Gallery).After high-school football stars were accused of rape, online vigilantes demanded that justice be served. I loved this on The New Yorker: There’s Nothing Decorous About Rob Delaney’s Grief. Rob Delaney Author Bio I spent my birthday reading an advance copy of Rob Delaney’s A Heart That Works. Rob’s son Henry died in early 2018. I remember reading Rob’s post about Henry’s death while lying in bed with my son Miles as he was falling asleep next to me. I sobbed as quietly as I could reading Rob’s words and thinking “I can’t imagine.” A few months later, Miles was killed at age 5. 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. They help me.

In 2016, Rob Delaney’s one-year-old son Henry was diagnosed with a brain tumour. Amidst hospital life, surgeries, chemotherapy and a newfound community of carers, his family learnt the starkest truths about life. Absolutely gutted me. I felt the need to listen to Rob tell his story, to sit and hold that space for him.

Need Help?

Shondaland spoke with Delaney about Henry, the emotional toll of writing, and how love ultimately binds us all. SN: You talk about this a bit in the book — almost wondering why it was so important for you to write, why you felt compelled to talk about it. But then you kind of answer your own question a chapter or two later when you say, “[Joan] Didion made me feel less alone.” Which I think is precisely what this book will do for so many people. My question is, ultimately, do you feel like this book was written for you , for others who are hurting with a similar type of pain, or something else altogether?