The Heart and Other Monsters

A Memoir

De: Rose Andersen

Narrado por: Marina Pratt

Bloomsbury presents The Heart and Other Monsters by Rose Andersen, read by Marina Pratt.

"Impossible to put down. It haunts me still.” —Alex Marzano-Lesnevich, author of The Fact of a Body: A Murder and a Memoir

A riveting, deeply personal exploration of the opioid crisis—an empathic memoir infused with hints of true crime.

In November 2013, Rose Andersen’s younger sister Sarah died of an overdose in the bathroom of her boyfriend’s home in a small town with one of the highest rates of opioid use in the state. Like too many of her generation, she had become addicted to heroin. Sarah was 24 years old.

To imagine her way into Sarah’s life, Rose revisits their volatile childhood, marked by their stepfather’s omnipresent rage and their father’s pathological lying. As the dysfunction comes into focus, so does a broader picture of the opioid crisis and the drug rehabilitation industry in small towns across America. And when Rose learns from the coroner that Sarah’s cause of death was a methamphetamine overdose, the story takes a wildly unexpected turn.

As Andersen sifts through her sister’s last days, we come to recognize the contours of grief and its aftermath: the psychic shattering which can turn to anger, the pursuit of an ever-elusive verdict, and the intensely personal rites of imagination and art needed to actually move on.

Reminiscent of Alex Marzano-Lesnevich’s The Fact of a Body, Maggie Nelson’s Jane: A Murder, and Lacy M. Johnson’s The Other Side, Andersen’s debut is a potent, profoundly original journey into and out of loss.©2020 Rose Andersen (P)2020 Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Love, Pain, Grief, Mystery and Fascinating

Gorgeous prose, honesty, vulnerability - my attention never wavered. I had wanted to read a memoir. I googled around and found three. I couldn’t stand any of them! I have a short attention span and I quit all three before the end of their first chapters. Too much “telling” not enough “showing.” This book was just right. I could “see” everything cinematically. I’m so glad I found this book.

heartbreaking, deep, beautifully written

how to create a narrative out of such despair? this book is a testimony to how art can give shape to loss and grief and trauma. absolutely brilliant.