74 Words - by John Kenney (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

Bestselling author John Kenney writes a luminous, powerful memoir about the long tail of grief--the ways it hides, the ways it shapes us, and what it means, finally, to mourn someone fully, even if it takes half a lifetime to find the words.

When John Kenney's mother died, the Boston Globe ran her obituary. It was just 74 words long. He was twelve years old, and no one explained grief to him. So he did what children do: he kept moving, kept growing, kept living, burying the loss somewhere deep and unexamined for nearly fifty years.

After writing his bestselling novel about an obituary writer, I See You've Called in Dead, Kenney couldn't stop thinking about the impossibility of summing up a person's life in that small format, in just 74 words. And once he started expanding his mother's story, he couldn't stop. 74 Words is a son's reckoning with memory, the mother he lost, and the woman he never got a chance to know. It's the story of a man who ultimately allows himself to grieve.

Review Quotes

Praise for Previous Work

"Like Matthew Klam, Jonathan Tropper, and Nick Hornby, Kenney has perfected the comedy of the lonely middle-aged guy."
--The Washington Post

"With the satirical bite of Richard Russo's Straight Man, the introspection of Fredrik Backman's A Man Called Ove, and the reinvention of Andrew Sean Greer's Less, Kenney's vivid prose transforms the mundane into unexpected hilarity."
--Booklist (starred review)

"Readers get the beauty of Thurber Award winner Kenney's writing, with descriptions of the everyday that feel like poetry. Book clubs will find much to discuss."
--Library Journal

"I loved this beautiful book so much I couldn't put it down. Funny, charming, and so incredibly moving. I even cried. Ugh. John Kenney, what have you done to me?"
--Gary Janetti, author of Do You Mind If I Cancel?: (Things That Still Annoy Me)

"There are writers I turn to when I need a guaranteed laugh, and John Kenney is certainly among them. But John is also on a shorter, more rarefied list of writers who can evoke a laugh and make you feel alive."
--Steven Rowley, author of The Celebrants

"John Kenney has the remarkable ability to write characters that are at once hilariously absurd, charming, deeply flawed, cringe-worthy, lovable and just so . . . human."
--Liz Astrof, author of Stay-at-Work Mom: Marriage, Kids, and Other Disasters and producer of The King of Queens

About the Author

John Kenney is the bestselling author of I See You've Called in Dead, as well as two novels and four books of poetry, including Talk to Me, Love Poems for Married People, Love Poems for People with Children, and Love Poems for Anxious People. His first novel, Truth In Advertising, won the Thurber Prize for American Humor. He is a longtime contributor to The New Yorker magazine's Shouts & Murmurs column. He lives in Larchmont, New York, with his wife, Lissa, a therapist, and two children, whose names currently escape him.