![]() ![]() Grief, the bird says and Porter brilliantly shows, is “the fabric of selfhood, and beautifully chaotic. Full of unexpected humour and profound emotional truth, Grief Is the Thing with Feathers marks the arrival of a thrilling new talent. Their father, a Ted Hughes scholar and scruffy romantic, imagines a future of well-meaning visitors and emptiness. He keeps his charges, and this book, careening between mocking hilarity and heartbreaking sorrow, with pauses everywhere in between. In this extraordinary debut - part novella, part polyphonic fable, part essay on grief - Max Porters compassion and bravura style combine to dazzling effect. Grief is the Thing with Feathers Max Porter 3.84 36,359 ratings4,999 reviews In a London flat, two young boys face the unbearable sadness of their mother's sudden death. In other words, the screechy trickster is a philosopher of death and rebirth. ![]() ![]() The widower, “shuffling around, waiting for shock to give way,” feels “hung-empty.” The sons in their pj’s, “brave new boys without a Mum,” wonder, “Where are the fire engines? Where is the noise and clamour of an event like this?” In crashes a huge crow one night-“a sweet furry stink of just-beyond-edible food, and moss, and leather, and yeast”-to create both, and more.Ĭrow, who joins Dad and Boys in a trio of alternating voices in Max Porter’s one-of-a-kind debut, likes to, well, crow: “I was friend, excuse, deus ex machina, joke, symptom, figment, spectre, crutch, toy, phantom, gag, analyst and babysitter.” He is also a mythic figure out of the poetry of Ted Hughes, about whom Dad was trying to write when tragedy hit. ![]()
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