Routines and reality are upended, people have to relearn normal behavior. It makes me feel, palpably, its narrator’s grief, it’s a strangely effective way to make its readers feel the topsy-turvy world that a family finds itself in once the mother/wife suddenly dies. I don’t know whether the fictional tale in its pages is powered in any way by real, extratextual grief, but I don’t really care. I didn’t read any reviews or interviews regarding Porter’s book. A strange, odd, moving novel(la) that moves between genres, evoking Ted Hughes implicitly and explicitly, an overwhelming book that deals with the grief of a husband that lost his wife, of two boys that lost their mother. And yet – what a tremendous, what an enormous achievement this little book turned out to be. I had never heard of Max Porter before or the book (nor have I looked him up in the meantime). There was a Dickinsonian title with a twist, and a pretty cover and that was it. Mentioned on Twitter by a Bishop scholar I admire, I picked it up on a whim, without any expectations. That’s why so many of my recent reviews start by referring back to other recent reviews. I pick up books that turn up in my usual circles of reading and recommendation. When you don’t have a lot of time to read for entertainment, you can get the impression that you can’t really be surprised anymore. Porter, Max (2015), Grief is the thing with feathers, Faber and Faber
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