Max Porter

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 self-described sentimental bird is attracted to the grieving family and threatens to stay until they no longer need him. As weeks turn to months and physical pain of loss gives way to memories, this little unit of three begin 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.

Grief is the Thing with Feathers

yaya

Nataly

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.

Lorelei Petcu

A howling sorry which is yes which is thank you which is onwards.

Levi-Mae 

‘Ghosts do not haunt, they regress. Just as when you need to go to sleep you think of trees or lawns, you are taking instant symbolic refuge in a ready-made iconography of early safety and satisfaction. That exact place is where ghosts go.’

‘I miss her so much it is a vast golden prince, a concert hall, a thousand trees, a lake, nine thousand buses, a million cars, twenty million birds and more. The whole city is my missing her.’

‘and we are fifty feet out to sea being chewed apart by sadness.’

‘She was not busy dying, and there is no detritus of care, she was simply busy living, and then she was gone.’

‘For a souvenir, for a warning, for a lick of night in the morning.’ 

Celine

There's grief and there's impractical obsession.

Júlia Bertoldi

Mari-Claire Parrin

ephe

kayla 

Riya

Ok so this was something different and unique, not different in a bad way though. I loved the exploration of grief through different povs, how the passing of days were shown in a subtle way. Like how the author never told the time frame of family’s mourning because we can’t put any specific time stamp on the duration of someone’s grieving period. 

Then there’s the crow, who is just an embodiment of the father’s grief, and helps him and his children to be normal. The father gives free reign to the mourning part of his brain to Crow, by having him help to write his book and pour out his most vulnerable and raw thoughts. He couldn’t show sadness unabashedly so he conjured up Crow to give some ounce of physicality to his pain, which was beautifully shown by the author.

By the end of the novel, you could see that they might have been in a better place but they were still grieving since you can never truly stop grieving; you can just become comfortable with it. As it was rightly said in the book- “Grief is a long term project.”

Stefano

Thomas Steur 

this was a startlingly beautiful and intriguing entertainment of grief. short, cryptic, but a very well told story of the universal feelings of loss. I especially love the narration. who are the boys? which one of them is talking? if we don't know which one is even talking, how can we trust the crow is real? Porter's writing begs these questions, which are interesting to try to answer.

heleen de boever

Midori Kobayashi

how to deal with grief- question we have all wondered about. this book and it's grief counsellor- a crow, tell us that. it was poignant it was vague at times but overall left me thinking a lot of thoughts at 2AM so.

Shona Tiger

Hellboy TCR

Its a 3.5 star book which I thought was going to fail for the way grief(a crow that talks) was portrayed, but man, the writer's avoided most of the traps that could come up in such a narration. There were beautifully written passages and touching moments all through. But sometimes it also tries be a bit clever. Almost a 4 star and a great way to launch a writing career. More on it later.

High Fidelity

Pricam o muskarcu koji ostaje bez zene.
Prica o dva decaka koji ostaju bez majke.
U njihov skrhani zivot ulazi vrana koja je stvarna, koja je metafora, koja je tu za razgovor, koja je tu da bude dadilja, vrana koja je tu da ih ujede za srce I da im pokaze kako je tuga dugotrajni projekat.
Jako lepo napisano, velika preporuka.

Fraser Simons

For a book about grief it sure doesn’t overstay it’s welcome. But also opaque to me, in a weird way, since it’s also gripping on audio. I like sad things usually, and I liked the concept of this book quite a bit. I suspect it might be a bit disappointing because of how hyped this is for me. 

I have had it recommended to me about 25 times. And I rate based on expectations. 3 being, it met my expectations, which is hard to do when it’s so highly recommended. But also felt a bit sad I didn’t connect with it more so I could be on the same train as the other friends, who absolutely adore it. The nice thing is that at two hours long I can easily revisit it at some point and perhaps like it more, having my expectations adjusted for that reading of it. We shall see.

Jenna

Grief is the Thing with Feathers by Max Porter is a strange little book. It follows a dad and his two sons as they mourn the sudden and unexpected death of his wife. In the book, grief takes the form of a big crow named Crow. Thinking back on it, I'm not sure if he was a giant crow or a regular sized crow. For some reason in my mind I thought of him as a human sized crow, but yeah maybe that isn't accurate. 

The writing in this book is poetic, which is fitting because the father is a Ted Hughes scholar. Many of the chapters share touching and insightful moments of a family dealing with the pain of losing a loved one. However, the chapters from Crow's perspective were often erratic and nonsensical. I'm not sure if I just didn't get it or if there was nothing to get.

This book is a quick read and I think many people would enjoy it. I did enjoy it, despite the Crow chapters being weird. It wasn't the idea of a talking babysitter grief Crow that was too weird... it was the writing in the Crow chapters that I didn't really enjoy.

I'll end this review with one of my favorite quotes from the book (not from a crow chapter) to give you a little taste of the beautiful parts. "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, enjoying her view. Everybody passing could comprehend how much I miss her. How physical my missing is. I miss her so much it is a vast golden prince, a concert hall, a thousand trees, a lake, nine thousand buses, a million cars, twenty million birds and more. The whole city is my missing her."

nina

i liked some of the prose. the characters felt contrived sometimes. it was very self-indulgent and i'm sylvia plath all the way.

Emmett

As sly and spare and painful as a sweet, thin knife - this slim, beautiful book hides a darkness of its own, amid playful rhymes, and everyday sounds and sights, attesting to how grief changes everything and changes nothing. Porter's writing is uncannily reminiscent of Hughes' own, and stylistically amorphous, hovering on the threshold in a poetic poem, where a single gem of a word draws blood.

carla watson 

it was was good but i wouldn’t read it again because i don’t think i understood what it was about as i wasn’t really paying attention definitely something different

Nicole A

This book describes the sensations of grief on point. Although the story moved so quickly, the content made me want to slow down. It contains novels and collections of poetry - odd read but definitely a good one.

Originally published: London: Faber & Faber Ltd, 2015.

A Novel

Grief Is the Thing with Feathers

Patty M.

Around the Year in 52 Books
Week 15 Prompt
A book with a unique format/writing structure

This book was written in the form of poetry, sometimes versed, sometimes not. Strange use of onomatopoeia. Came across choppy and disjointed. Interesting, but not memorable.

Olivera Mitić

I'm not sure if people who have never lost anyone will be able to get this book. I'm not trying to be pretentious, I just honestly don't think you could see how accurate this is unless you have grieved yourself. 
Personally, I lost two very important family members 4 years ago. They died within a year of eachother and it felt something like this book does. I hope I won't have to re-live that feeling any time soon, but it's also weirdly comforting to see that other people out there had horrible experiences that are similar to mine.

Grace Emilia Machon

This book is worth every page, I would read it again which I never do. I would carry it with me in case I needed it. I would offer it to a friend but not a grieving one, I would offer it to my friend who needed to spend an out with something that wouldn’t disappoint them quiet so much as other things do

Laura

This will probably be the shortest review in the history of reviews, because, as is often the case for books I love, it's hard to write about them. Books I hate can get lengthy reviews that involve copious nit-picking and snark, but books I love get shorter and more serious reviews. Normally, I would have started out with a story about Ted Hughes just to set the mood, so to speak, but that now seems far too light-hearted for this book's heavy, heavy subject matter.

There is little to say about this book. I get the sense that reading it is a deeply personal experience, which is why if you haven't, get it now. It's one of those books that screams future classic. I am tempted to buy a bunch and scatter them about, donating them to places like Goodwill or used book stores. Even the cover (the UK cover also) is very much the kind of cover books in the classic canon usually have, and so is the font. As a whole, this book was hugely impactful, in a way that is hard to describe.

I don't know if it will ever make my favorite books of all time or even my favorite books of 2017 list, but I'm still glad I read this. It was a quick read, because of the shortness of the book and the poem-y prose it was written in. This is obviously a 9 book, no doubt about it. It was written too skillfully to be anything but. I liked Crow, and his jet-black sense of humor greatly appealed to me. I am mostly unfamiliar with Hughes' work, and I am tempted to read more of Hughes now after reading this book. I've always liked poetry, and any book that gives me an excuse to spend a lazy Sunday afternoon reading poetry is a good book in my opinion. And I like crows, too. Most don't, but I've always had a soft spot for them. They are what they are, and I admire them for their honesty.

This book portrays grief in its rawest, most ugly state. I appreciate that. I didn't cry, but that's just me being me. I wanted too, though, after reading the last lines. When I was putting this book on my shelf after reading, I noticed that on my alphabetized shelf that this book (since the author's last name is Porter) would have to sit next to The Bell Jar. The Dad might not like that too much, but I do.

Grief is the Thing with Feathers

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