Told through chaotic and unconventional prose, ‘Grief is the Thing with feathers’ explores grief felt after the loss of a loved one and the ways with which it is dealt. When the wife of a Ted Hughes scholar, and the mother of two boys, dies suddenly, Crow appears at their door in the dead of night. At times Crow is a trickster, his dialogue is acerbic and he does not soften his responses to the family. However, he also provides guidance, promising to stay with the family until they are on a healthy path to healing.
What is so great about Porter’s novel is that death is not just a plot device written in as a futile attempt to produce tears from the reader. ‘Grief is the Thing with Feathers’ is at once a novel, poetry, a meditative reflection on grief, and an untamed expression of raw emotion.
Porter’s unconventional form allows the nuances of human emotion to be explored, arguably more so than if he confined the book to the reader’s idea of a conventional novel. You won’t have to try hard to draw meaning from the book or feel the sadness that permeates its pages. You may end up crying (it is practically guaranteed, such is the mastery of Porter’s writing) but expect catharsis, and also a touch of hope as the family makes progress in processing the trauma that they have experienced.
Max Porter has created one of those books that you sit down to and think God this here is genius, especially since ‘Grief is the Thing with Feathers’ is Porter’s debut novel. Read it. Read. It.
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