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In a London flat, two young boys face the unbearable sadness of their mother's sudden death. Their father, a Ted Hughes scholar and scruffy romantic, imagines a future of well-meaning visitors and emptiness. In this moment of despair they are visited by Crow - antagonist, trickster, healer, babysitter. This sentimental bird is drawn to the grieving family and threatens to stay until they no longer need him. As weeks turn to months and the pain of loss gives way to memories, the little unit of three starts to heal. In this extraordinary debut - part novella, part polyphonic fable, part essay on grief - Max Porter's compassion and bravura style combine to dazzling effect. Full of unexpected humour and profound emotional truth, Grief Is the Thing with Feathers marks the arrival of a thrilling new talent.--… (more)
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“I missed her so much that I wanted to build a hundred-foot memorial to her with my bare hands. I wanted to see her sitting in a vast stone chair in Hyde Park,
After his wife dies suddenly, a man and his two young sons are plunged into a spiral of pain and despair.
The man is working on a biography of the poet, Ted Hughes and at the family's nadir, the father is visited by
Crow, the infamous trickster, that is featured in Hughes work. The bird is here to heal and comfort the grief-stricken.
This is an amazing debut. It is a potent novella, packed with dazzling verse. Despite it's dark themes, it also contains humor and glimmers of hope. One more quote, (I bookmarked a multitude):
“Moving on, as a concept, is for stupid people, because any sensible person knows grief is a long-term project. I refuse to rush. The pain that is thrust upon us let no man slow or speed or fix.”
The book is written in short, little small blocks rather than lots of sentences into paragraphs and jumps from one voice to the next (Crow, Dad, Boys) So there is a shifting perspective but mostly it is about how dad deals with his grief and how his grief ends up effecting the boys. The author is drawn to Ted Hughes and Emily Dickinson. The sections progress as the dad makes his way through the experience of grief and the reader can see that progression. I actually read a library copy. It is a paperback, the book was published originally 2015 in London and my copy was published by Graywolf Press a Minneapolis based publisher. The cover has three windows, one with shade up, shade half down and one with shade all the way down and off to the side is the title and a little black crow in flight or just landing in the upper right corner. There are a lot of white space and a dropped feather here and there. The author wanted to write about grief but used his love of his wife and boys as his foundation and the grief he experienced when his father died. The author did a good job because it felt like a memoir and I could compare this book to the memoirs by C.S.Lewis, MacDonald's and Didion. So I give this book 4.5 stars and would round up to 5 rather than down. This book should really resonate with me because I like books about grief, I liked CS Lewis's book Grief Observed, Didion's book is one of my favorites and I also love Emily Dickinson's work. I have not read Ted Hughe's Crow. Perhaps I need to do that.
Wow. To begin with I will just say again, wow. This book surprised and intrigued me, not with its storyline or creative plot, not with inventive world-building, but with its sheer force of will, with its language and its comprehensive reaching.
The best descriptor I
Max Porter delivers a varied exploration of reaction—visceral and complex—to loss in the form of a delusion, a coping mechanism, a crow, a thing with feathers. In short, this wonderfully written, uniquely conceived novella is a many-faceted reflection on human response to grief.
I also give it 5 stars because it deals with death and loss in a real and meaningful way.
It is short and can be
Can't say enough good things and don’t want to dilute my thoughts either so just read it.
I started reading Grief is a Thing with Feathers the day after I had suffered a loss, thinking perhaps it would help me, provide some solace.
It didn't. I got through a few
I put it to one side, got on with life, read a bit of escapist trash, read a couple of books for my monthly club, and then came back to this. Would it make more sense, almost two months on?
No, not really. It was still mostly tosh. The crow is still annoying (perhaps if I had read Ted Hughes' book I'd understand it more).
There are some really lovely passages in this book (mostly under the Boys' heading), but only maybe a dozen pages out of the 128 pages of the book. I know for some people, the Crow is a great illustration of grief that they have experienced, but it just didn't work for me.
this is tripe
i paid my whack
now i want it back
A woman dies suddenly, leaving behind her husband and two young sons. As they negotiate the days, months and years that follow, they are accompanied by the physical manifestation of their grief, a large and not entirely benign crow.
I was pretty sure I wouldn't enjoy this book and for the first half that remained largely true. My brother died suddenly last year and grief, it turns out, is both unique to each person and utterly, utterly universal. Porter's understanding of grief is so deep as to move past the differences and grab the heart of it.
Some days I realize I've been forgetting basic things, so I run upstairs, or downstairs, or wherever they are and I say, 'You must know that your Mum was the funniest, most excellent person. She was my best friend. She was so sarcastic and affectionate ...' and then I run out of steam because it feels so crass and lazy, and they nod and say, 'We know, Dad, we remember.'
'She would call me sentimental.'
'You are sentimental.'
The offer me space on the sofa next to them and the pain of them being so naturally kind is like appendicitis. I need to double over and hold myself because they are so kind and keep regenerating and recharging their kindness without any input from me.
This is a slight book, told from the alternating viewpoints of the husband, the two sons speaking together, and the crow, who begins as a malevolent and destructive force, then mutates into something approaching, but never quite reaching, comfort.
Grief, in the guise of a crow, spreads its wings over a father and his two young sons as they work through the sudden loss of wife and mother. In a Neil Gaiman like
This little gem packed a wallop of emotion in it and, yes, even a few tears were shed. I'd actually go out on a limb and say it's the best book I've read all year.
If you have ever lost someone who sings in your soul forever, you will understand this book; it will speak
The father character is a scholar who is writing a piece about Ted Hughes’ “Crow: From The Life and Songs of Crow.” Hughes wrote this collection of poems as a way of dealing with his own grief following Silvia Plath’s suicide. This obscure reference is quite apt to his situation, but seems to have been explored so obliquely as to lose much of its power. Instead Porter’s crow seems to be just mundane and intrusive—much like a worldly aunt come to cook and clean for the family following the death.
The writing is filled with imaginative insights on how people think following the death of a loved one. The father becomes weary of all the “template-ready” comments from well meaning friends and muses about all of his wife’s mundane possessions that she will never use again. The boys conger activities designed to keep missing her.
The narrative is well paced and the writing is quite lyrical, reminiscent of a long poem. The writing, however, often is too elliptical for anyone not used to reading poetry.
I wasn't really a fan of the form,written in verse and sometimes, a varied format presented through the careful manipulation of words and phrases in lines and stanzas. I also wasn't much of a fan of the author's writing nor poetic style. I found it severely lacking in trying to achieve an ''effect'' in using this format and theme.
The only bit of the whole book I liked was the part about demon who fed on grief who visited the family, though 'visited' isn't exactly the current word as it never really went past the front door. That part read very much like a fairy tale (without a fairy) and that's the only reason I liked it.
The mother of this family dies suddenly and the father and sons are finding it incredibly hard to
Its a short book, a novella, but its not really a straight line "traditional" narrative. The story keeps flipping back and forth to to little vignettes from Dad, the Crow and the Boys. I'm not a poetry buff, but its really and extended tale told thru free verse. At any rate, its a profound read on grief and the ability to heal and the mechanisms we use. Its my favorite read so far this year. Highly recommend.
Quotes, from the sublime:
"Soft. Slight. Like light, like a child's foot talcum dusted and kissed, like stroke reversing suede, like dust, like pins and needles...like everything nature-made and violent and quiet. Its all completely missing. Nothing patient now."
To the ridiculous:
"If you haven't observed human children after serious quantities of sugar, you must. It raises and deranges them hilariously, for an hour or so, and then they slump. It is uncannily like blood-drunk fox cubs"
10/10
S: 8/2/16 - F: 8/5/16 (4 Days)
It describes the broken, unlogical pieces of life someone goes through when suddenly a beloved
It's gripping by moments, absurd in others, it's people trying to pick up their lives. In this aspect you could say that the author is succesful in his setup.
But, it does not stick, it doesn't makes you feel sick, i didn't get empathic or emotional and so it stayed a nice poetic narrative, weirdly unfolded and wrapped together again. But not moving, not strangling you like for instance [Sprakeloos] by [[Tom Lanoye]] on the loss of his mother did. Not the wild emotions and sucking in that [De H Is van Havik] by [[Helen Macdonald]] did.
Nice, that's the correct word. Nothing more, nothing less.
This work appeared to me to be an attempt at clever, rather than empathic. Death of a spouse and it's aftermath is not something to be played with.