Blurb:

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 sentimental bird is drawn to the grieving family and threatens to stay until they no longer need him.
This extraordinary debut, full of unexpected humour and emotional truth, marks the arrival of a thrilling and significant new talent.

Review:

Grief Is The Thing With Feathers has been on my radar for a while, so I took the opportunity to borrow my mum’s library copy, and I was actually pleasantly surprised. I often feel overwhelmed by books that focus more on style and language than plot, but Max Porter’s use of language is beautiful. I really appreciated the way he puts the emotions in the book into words to express the experience of grief in a way that readers can understand and relate to.

There are three different perspectives in Grief Is The Thing With Feathers: dad, the boys and Crow. Each of these characters obviously had a different relationship with the deceased “mum” and I was interested in exploring their feelings in their own words.

Grief Is The Thing With Feathers takes a lot of inspiration from Ted Hughes, in particular, Crow. I don’t have an in depth knowledge of Crow, and I think this may have helped me to appreciate the more subtle references in the book. However, I did enjoy the book overall.

Grief Is The Thing With Feathers is available from Amazon.