6/30/2023 0 Comments 2015 novel by max porterWhat’s so powerful about this book is the way Porter gives the reader the merest outline of these characters lives, yet I was able to experience and relate to their loss completely. Its genre isn’t important because what “Grief is the Thing with Feathers” does is bluntly convey the fact of profound loss and the complicated ways people react to that loss. It could be called a novella or poetry/dramatic monologues or self help or a creative literary treatise. It would be difficult to classify this book. The narrative switches between the three perspectives of Dad, Sons and Crow to form an impressionist picture of the years of grief following the loss of the mother. It taunts them, plays games with them, offers contradictory bits of wisdom and makes dirty rhymes. Inspired by Ted Hughes “Crow” poems, this bird infiltrates the lives of a Dad and his Sons following the death of the Mother. But this is an entirely different kind of book. Similarly, Max Porter gives grief a living body of a crow in his debut. A few years ago I read Rebecca Hunt’s moving debut novel “Mr Chartwell” about Churchill’s “black dog” of depression which is given a physical form.
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