"Perfect devices: doctors, ghosts and crows. We can do things others can't, like eat sorrow, un-birth secrets and have theatrical battles with language and God"
So the Christmas break finally gave me chance to work through my bookshelf as its literally creaking under the weight of a fiction addiction. Luckily for me Max Porter's novella is a masterclass is brevity and unputdownable gotta-read-in-one-sittingness.
"Once upon a time there was a crow who wanted nothing more than to care for a pair of motherless children...."
Grief is the Thing with Feathers is part fiction and part poetry - Porter takes us on an intimate journey into the life of a small family dealing with the loss of their wife/mother. Dad is working on a book about Ted Hughes (the origin of the Crow in the title) when his wife dies leaving him to deal with his own loss and that of his two young sons.
Porter's prose is beautiful, moving and deeply personal - unlike anything I've read before. The narrative is made up of short little scenes and snap shots that are almost like flash fiction in places. Its the images that Porter beautifully paints that will leave an impression over the plot.
With the novel winning the International Dylan Thomas Price 2016 and being shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize and the Guardian First Book Award what more convincing do you need? Read this book now, you'll never forget it.
"Once upon a time there was a crow who wanted nothing more than to care for a pair of motherless children...."
Grief is the Thing with Feathers is part fiction and part poetry - Porter takes us on an intimate journey into the life of a small family dealing with the loss of their wife/mother. Dad is working on a book about Ted Hughes (the origin of the Crow in the title) when his wife dies leaving him to deal with his own loss and that of his two young sons.
Porter's prose is beautiful, moving and deeply personal - unlike anything I've read before. The narrative is made up of short little scenes and snap shots that are almost like flash fiction in places. Its the images that Porter beautifully paints that will leave an impression over the plot.
With the novel winning the International Dylan Thomas Price 2016 and being shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize and the Guardian First Book Award what more convincing do you need? Read this book now, you'll never forget it.
A couple of times this book made me think of Simon and Garfunkel's I Am A Rock; "I have my books and poetry to protect me", I love that song.
I read this novel in paperback over the Christmas holiday in Thame, Oxfordshire.
Grief is the Thing with Feathers by Max Porter published by Faber and Faber, 129 pages.
I read this novel in paperback over the Christmas holiday in Thame, Oxfordshire.
Grief is the Thing with Feathers by Max Porter published by Faber and Faber, 129 pages.
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