Hero
A Love Story
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- USD 14.99
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- USD 14.99
Descripción editorial
A captivating literary debut, this modern love story and myth-inspired novel is a “fearless interrogation of female desire, anger, and loneliness” (The Guardian) that takes place over seven days as a woman wrestles with a marriage proposal and what it means for her personal and creative freedom.
She’s a waitress. He’s a chef. They used to be best friends, but now…they’re in love. She’s also a selkie, a siren, Odysseus, Persephone, Helen of Troy, a Tudor queen, and a cowgirl called Quick Fingers. He’s a really good man.
When he asks her to marry him, Hero panics. She may be a lot of things, but the one thing she doesn’t want to be is anybody’s wife. He gives her one week to decide, so to gather her thoughts, she begins to write him a letter. It is both the story of how they fell in love, and of who she is, and why marriage fills her with equal parts delight and terror.
Drawing on a rich history of myth and legend, and yet unmistakably one of the moment, Hero is a love story about what it means for women to be supporting characters in a world written by men. How can you be yourself when you are a product of other people’s imaginations? How can you love another person and be free?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
An aspiring writer mulls a marriage proposal in Buckley's evocative if digressive debut. Hero, who works as a waitress, has been living with her chef boyfriend for several years when he proposes. She demurs and he leaves, giving her a week to decide, during which she writes him seven letters. In them, she considers how she and other women tend to put their needs before the men in their lives, and claims that a woman's true self lies beneath the "fiction" created by and for men's gazes ("Girls, listen to me, you have to make yourself up before someone else does.... You're a myth. Pick a good one"). In this vein, Hero reflects on such figures as Helen of Troy, whom she sees depicted in a painting without a face ("Maybe the Helen in the gallery is relieved to not have a face. Finally, she thinks, some peace and quiet"). Though some will wish for a more direct view into the couple's dynamic, Buckley succeeds at making Hero's fears palpable. This will leave readers with plenty to chew on.
