Author:Martin Spinelli
'In the pit of my stomach, as I kissed my four-year-old son Lio and my darling wife Sasha goodbye, I knew something was up. By that evening, the police had told me about the crash.
'Lio's bright and talented mother was killed that day, and he narrowly escaped the same fate. But instead of it being an ending for us, the crash was a beginning.
'Lio's miraculous recovery from severe brain damage and a coma defied medical science. As I witnessed his astonishing journey - from intensive care bed to 10 Downing Street - and fought to pull him through horrific injuries and the loss of his mother, I found real purpose and meaning for the first time in my life.'
After the Crash is much more than a moving personal story. It's a handbook for dealing with disaster, not just surviving it but mastering it and using it to transform your life for the better.
Warm, informative and incredibly life-affirming
—— You magazineDelves into the very heart of later life
—— Saga magazineWhat makes it so readable is her advice comes filtered through her personal experience
—— Harper's BAZAARHeart-warming, funny and jam-packed with common sense
—— Woman's DayA salve for frazzled parents
—— Herald on SundayA likeable memoir...Yossarian Slept Here gives us the gruff, arrogant big shot; the smug cocky fellow who sometimes showed up to friend's cocktail parties for the sheer fun of insulting them
—— Financial TimesErica Heller...seems to have weathered her girlhood better than most daughters of celebrated literary lions... Heller's book shows a robust acceptance of her father's overbearing personality and Don Draperesque approach to marriage and fatherhood... The New York of the period leaps off the page
—— IndependentWith wit punctuating lambent nostalgia, Erica Heller brings her father to life in an animated, absorbing fashion, documenting his quirky habits, celebrity, and "invisible, unfathomable inner cycle," but also her parents' divorce and Heller's suffering with Guillain-Barre syndrome. The total effect is akin to leafing through a bulging family scrapbook where one finds a few blurry images among many snapshots in sharp focus. Erica Heller has inherited her father's finely tuned flair with words
—— Publishers WeeklyIntimate, yet well-researched..comedic and poignant, her many-faceted memoir is rendered in high-definition as Heller recounts meals, travels, parties, arguments, lies, and the serious illnesses that afflicted her and her parents. Writing with wit, compassion, aplomb, and no little wonder at what her father wrought and her mother endured and how this legacy shaped her, Heller presents an involving and invaluable work of personal and cultural history.
—— BooklistHeller's family memoir brims with warm reflections right from the opening chapters... An affectionate family scrapbook crafted with a bittersweet blend of humor and pathos
—— Kirkus ReviewsErica Heller to me is like a Carrie Fisher on the East Coast. She is as authentic as they come
—— Richard Lewis, comedian, actor, authorErica Heller has a story to tell and I for one am eager to see it in print. I think this is going to be one hell(er) of a memoir
—— Christopher Buckley, author of Losing Mum and PupThe New York of the period leaps off the page
—— Emma Hagestadt , IndependentHeller's domestic side is evoked with painful detail by his daughter, Erica, in her well written, occasionally harrowing memoir, Yossarian Slept Here
—— Sunday TimesLikeable memoir...just as Daugherty is blind to the limitations of Heller's work so he appears resistant to personal criticism of Heller or rebuke. Just One Catch is no hagiography but, of these two biographical accounts on Yossarian Slept Here gives us the gruff, arrogant big shot; the smug cocky fellow who sometimes showed up to friend's cocktail parties for the sheer fun of insulting them
—— Leo Robson , Financial Times