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An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination: A Memoir
Unavailable
An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination: A Memoir
Unavailable
An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination: A Memoir
Audiobook3 hours

An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination: A Memoir

Published by Hachette Audio

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

4.5/5

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Currently unavailable

Currently unavailable

About this audiobook

"This is the happiest story in the world with the saddest ending," writes Elizabeth McCracken in her powerful, inspiring memoir. A prize-winning, successful novelist in her 30s, McCracken was happy to be an itinerant writer and self-proclaimed spinster. But suddenly she fell in love, got married, and two years ago was living in a remote part of France, working on her novel, and waiting for the birth of her first child.
This audiobook is about what happened next. In her ninth month of pregnancy, she learned that her baby boy had died. How do you deal with and recover from this kind of loss? Of course you don't-but you go on. And if you have ever experienced loss or love someone who has, you will hope to go on with the help and company of this remarkable audiobook.
With humor and heart and unfailing generosity, McCracken considers the nature of love, and grief. She opens her heart and leaves all of ours the richer for it.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateSep 10, 2008
ISBN9781600244728
Unavailable
An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination: A Memoir

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Reviews for An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination

Rating: 4.65 out of 5 stars
4.5/5

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  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Searing examination of the grief that comes with a stillborn baby. Intense and full of breathtaking moments, time spent teetering on the edge of the abyss, time spent in free fall, and time spent blinking, wondering how everything can look so ordinary after it's all over. But it's never all over.

    This is an absolutely lovely book about what it means to be human, what it feels like to hurt in ways very nearly unimaginable to those who haven't been there, and what it's like on the other side of that particular ocean.

    Extraordinary. The author's narration is beautiful, too.

    Highly recommended. Unless you are pregnant or could become pregnant, in which case stay the hell away from this book.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I think I'm through with my streak of harrowing motherhood memoirs: good to end on an up note. This book is lovely and sad and funny, and it's very well written.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This is a well-written book about a very sad subject, giving birth to a stillborn baby, but strangely the book failed to move me.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I found this book extraordinarily helpful as I navigated the grief associated with a pregnancy loss. While the physical aspects of our losses were different, many of the emotional aspects she described were the same. In fact, I read the book with a highlighter in hand marking the passages that expressed the way I was feeling better than I was able to express myself. I highly recommend this book to anyone who has experienced a pregnancy loss. I am very thankful to the author for sharing her story in such a wonderful, readable way.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Exact Replica is a touching memoir about a woman who has gone through the unbearable pain of losing a child. Her son is stillborn after a healthy, normal pregnancy. McCracken does an admirable job of expressing her grief. Her sadness leaps off the pages and yet I wasn't sobbing all the way through like I predicted. While perhaps not everyone can relate to losing a child, its her deep pain, unbearable feelings and especially her cautious hope that anyone can understand. Her pain is somehow rewarded by the birth of another child whose sweet presence is known from page one. She juggles her grief and new-found joy carefully. And I can't help but admire her strength and even humor in the wake of such a life-altering tragedy. Whether or not you have children, you'll appreciate this book and McCracken's very personal story.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Listened to audio version. Very good. Never realized the impact on a woman who has a still-born child. Although the book at times was very sad, she also added some appropriate and very funny humor. Good memoir.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Sad story about the death of a baby, a stillbirth. Took place in 2006 and 2007, ending with the birth of her second child who lives. It would be interesting to read how she feels now - sometime later. It is a sad story, full of her grief. But still she seemed to whine a lot, to be quite unforgiving of "friends" who just didn't say the right thing.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Simple, gorgeous and moving. Plus, her voice is just one that I completely love. She does the sad/funny thing so well. Also, she is my height. Which makes me love her even more.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This book broke my heart then stitched it back together again. It is gorgeously written.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A beautifully written book that, for the first time, made me realize what my mother must have gone through when her middle child was stillborn.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I think there’s an old saying that you should never have to bury your child. Outliving my kids ranks number one in things “I don’t want to happen,” but sadly, there are parents who face this reality every day.While some parents lose children days, months or years after their births, some parents lose their child before the baby is born, experiencing a stillborn birth. This happened to popular novelist Elizabeth McCracken and was the subject of her memoir, An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination.I have never read a book like this before. As a mom, I am uncomfortable with the thought of losing a child, so I was not sure if I could read McCracken’s story. But with McCracken’s easy writing style, I finished her memoir in one day. Every page sucked me in. And while it’s filled with sadness, you get equal doses of hope and warm memories. She touched on so many important parts of the grieving process, and her reaction to other people’s reactions taught me a lot about how to support someone experiencing a loss.There were touching moments too. Her chapters about her husband and best friend’s support made me teary-eyed. What a lovely tribute to them both.McCracken took an uneasy subject and made it very human, very real and very approachable. While it will strike a familiar note with women who experienced the loss of a baby, I think all parents can learn from McCracken’s story. Having gotten to know her at this level, I hope to read her fictional books some day.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Author Elizabeth McCracken lived briefly in France, with her husband, in her early thirties. It is there she conceives her first child - a son named Pudding - and begins to dream of his life and how it will enrich her life. And then the unthinkable happens. In her ninth month of pregnancy, the child she and her husband have been anticipating dies. An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination is the story of loss and how one woman moved through it.Elizabeth McCracken has written a stunning memoir from the heart - a love letter of sorts to her first son and her husband. Her writing is never maudlin, yet is profoundly moving - and despite the bleak subject matter, it even manages to be funny at times. But it is McCracken’s honesty which makes the memoir powerful. She never pads the emotions or avoids the uncomfortable - instead she takes the reader through one of the most devastating years of her life with candor and grace. Lest the reader shy away from the book because a baby dies, it would be remiss of me not to mention that a child is also born and lives in this book…an event that is at the same time joyous, healing and bittersweet.I will admit that this book hit me like a sledgehammer. It sent me reeling. I felt blindsided by the intense emotions it stirred up for me…because I lost a child too. No, I have never been pregnant. My loss arrived through infertility. And McCracken’s prose resonated with me. She writes about other women’s pregnancies after her unbearable loss: 'Still, I wouldn’t have minded a pause in the whole business. A sudden harmless moratorium on babies being born. Doctors would have to tell the unfortunate pregnant, “I’m sorry. It happens sometimes. Tidal, we think. For everyone else, nine months, but for you, eleven months, maybe a year, maybe more. Don’t go outside. Don’t leave your house. Stroke your stomach, fine, but only in your own living room. Keep your lullabies to yourself. We’ll let you know when it’s time.” -From An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination, page 43-'AND ' No, I insist: other people’s children did not make me sad. But pregnant women did. -From An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination, page 111-'She writes of that horribly destructive behavior called Blame which threatens to stand in the way of moving forward through grief: 'Blame is a compulsive behavior, the emotional version of obsessive hand washing, until all you can do is hold your palms out till your hands are full of it, and rub, and rub, and accomplish nothing at all. And so we grieved but looked straight ahead. -From An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination, page 143-'I found myself nodding in agreement when McCracken spoke of the pain of answering those innocent questions about children posed by unsuspecting strangers. She wishes for a stack of cards she can hand out which say ‘My first child was stillborn‘ whenever a person coos over her second son and asks, “is this your first?” How I wish I had a similar stack of cards reading “I am infertile” for every time someone asks if I have children.McCracken writes: 'I want people to know but I don’t want to say it aloud. people don’t like to hear it but I think they might not mind reading it on a card. -From An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination, page 73-'Yes. I agree.McCracken’s great gift is that she reveals to her reader her deepest sadness, and her greatest hope. And in the end, she leaves us with a message which can sustain those who have experienced intolerable loss:'It’s a happy life, but someone is missing. It’s a happy life, and someone is missing. -From An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination, page 184'-This memoir is highly recommended, but with a cautionary note. I believed I had accepted my childlessness until I began reading McCracken’s words. I found myself closing the book often to weep, and yet I kept going back to read again. For women who have either lost a child or have never been able to conceive, this is a difficult book to read - but, it is also a hopeful book and one which reminds us we are not alone in our grief.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A book for those gone, so early in their little lives that it would seem they were almost a figment of our imagination. Written by a woman who knows what it feels like, what it looks like and how it is all perceived. What? A stillbirth, the loss, the pain, grief, the lists of firsts, of places never returned to, of a child that faded way before he was even seen.McCracken's emotion in this book is not theatrical, over dramatic, or written about in a long prose of self-mope. It is a book of reality, of memories, and memories that should have been, but were not and of the life that continues and the loss that is still felt even when others forget.If I had a stillbirth, this is the book I would grab, and if you haven't this is still the book I would recommend. I do not know this pain or the suffering that surrounds the death of a child, of one not even allowed to experience the first breath. An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination speaks soothing while raw words, from the depths of honesty inside McCracken's stunning pen-shaped-heart.As powerful as Elisabeth McCracken's memoir is, it is endearing, hopeful, sad and unique. This is the story of a woman, and her husband in a country not their own. The story of a baby that was not born, and his brother who would not ever take his place, but who would fill his parent's hearts with joy, even if they would never forget their sweet Pudding (that is what they endearingly named their first child). Ya gotta read it!!
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This is one of the most powerful books I've read in quite some time. It is easily read in a day. Once you start, you won't want to put it down. There is a huge amount of emotional vulnerability and honesty in this short memoir, which makes for an extraordinarily engaging read. From the beginning, the reader knows about the tragic and heartbreaking ending of McCracken's first pregnancy. We know what happened, but we're not quite sure about the details leading up to the point where she received the news that her unborn baby had died. McCracken makes you feel that you need to know. You need to understand exactly what happened. But she takes her time, giving you the background first.McCracken goes back and forth between past and present. How she met her husband (who is surely an angel, by the way), how they lived in various countries on various continents, how they ended up living in France at the time of her pregnancy. She is all over the place in terms of the timeline of events, which might be distracting, EXCEPT for the fact that all the jumping around somehow seemed appropriate given the subject matter of this book. Because this book is about grief, and let's face it: grief is messy.One of the aspects of this book that stands out the most in my mind is the author's feelings about the reactions of her friends and family. What expressions of sympathy gave her strength and courage, and what left her cold? This memoir was written a little over a year after her first baby died in utero, and shortly after the birth of her second child. McCracken is painfully honest about who responded how. She addresses the few people who reacted in an unforgivable way, but more importantly, she recounts the loving expressions of sympathy from friend after friend that sustained her. I think there is something to learn here, about what we need most from our friends and relatives when we are grieving. It might seem like this is a depressing book, but it's not. I think McCracken wrote this memoir to memorialize both her first child and her own experience. I don't think she wants closure. She makes it very clear in the book that she wants to remember her first child always and every day. The book is a tribute, and a beautiful one at that.