Grief Is the Thing with Feathers: A Novel

As soon as one opens this book, it is abruptly clear that Crow, an uninvited guest, has unpacked his bags and made himself comfortable in the home of a grieving family. The image painted of the omnipresent Crow personifying grief is excellent and powerful. A crow isn’t meant to be a sentimental bird, and so the book doesn't show the sentimental side of grief, it shows the raw and messy side – the side that many people are afraid to talk about. While almost cryptic at times, eventually a complete story emerges but the whole time it aspires to depict grief as something that can be seen and felt and heard. Those who have experienced grief will immediately understand it. Those who haven't, may learn from it. The language is inventive, brutal, and beautiful. There are moments when Crow completely fails to make any sense. (But then again, grief doesn't always make sense does it?) Anyone familiar with grief knows there is a silent kinship in it, especially when reading someone else's story. Words can be incredibly soothing, even if they aren’t your own. Expect some fragments of it to tear on your heartstrings. Because when mere words can be arranged in such a way on paper that draws parallels with another's experiences, it proves that we have more in common than we think. I highly recommend this intimate book - one that is stirring, yet oddly comforting to the very last page.

A small book (114 pages) that on one hand can be quickly read, on the other hand, I read it twice to get its full meaning as it's written in an unusal manner. The story is about mourning and survival after the death of a loved one, so the disjointed style very accurately catches your thinking and feelings at such a time. This may sound depressing, but it's not, it even has a few funny moments. Before reading it though, I'd look up "Ted Hughes, Sylvia Platte and crow" on Wickipedia as the protaganist is writing a book about them, they are mentioned quite a bit, and are relevant to his thinking. It only takes a minute to check this out and it's worth it. If you don't know Emily Dickens' mini poem "Hope is a Thing with Feathers", check that out, too. Both of these references add depth to this very moving and inciteful book.

A sweet story of grief and love among family members. The novel resonates as a grown up fairy tale.

A poignant look at process your grief, it's immaterial to ask if the crow is real or not, what matters is that we have a crow to walk you home to life safely after a profound tragedy.

This is not a book for everybody. It's not a "how to" of how to cope with grief, of how to survive a loss that you fear may destroy you entirely. It is not a feel-good story of some charming family finding some uplifting path through the loss of their wife and mother. But it is one of the most honest and true books I have ever read about the experience of grief. It's strange and illogical. It's brutally, darkly funny. It's tragic. It charts a specific, unique course of one family's stumbling, iterative, uncertain journey to finding a way to live in the world, to continue to love and to care, despite an enormous loss, despite a loss that can never be fully healed. I read this book twice, back to back. I'll wait a few months, then read it again. It's worth that sort of attention.

This is a stunning, thought provoking loosely narrative poem. Worth reading, but you may be disappointed if you expect a novel. What you should know about this "novel." It's a small book, thin book. Large type. White space. Quiet. A loosely narrative poem parading the most sumptuous language. But novels sell better than poems so it's a novel and says so on the cover in case you get confused. The structure is novel, as in new, told by Boys, Dad and Crow. Boys sections feel honest. Small boys doing boy things, telling partial truths, and thinking about them later while not at all understanding the big picture of what's been lost, but somehow able to show us what's really going on with Dad. Dad sections are sticky with fear and anxiety, which feels right, and creates questions and doubt to slog through like thick mud. It's easy to feel what he feels. Crow sections illuminate like a candle in the night, ethereal and dark. Crow makes up words, is bossy and seems a bit artificial to me. Unless grief attends to each of us in a different form, and maybe that's the point.

This unusual book defies categorization -- part novel, part poem, part meditation on grief, it adds up to an exquisitely written portrayal of how a father and his two sons cope with the aftermath of their wife and mother's sudden death. Their helper, guide, and general factotum for this time is Crow, a huge bird who arrives after the death, makes himself a member of the household and announces that he will stay until they no longer need him. It helps in understanding this book (and the character of Crow) to know something about British poet Ted Hughes, and to have read at least some of the poems in his book "Crow." But although there are erudite references to Hughes, his wife Sylvia Plath, and other literary and mythological figures, the book is neither pretentious nor academic. For me, it spoke directly and at a deep emotional level to experiences of loss, love, parenthood, friendship and of course grieving. I highly recommend this book.

I was disappointed in the book after reading the "wow" reviews before ordering it. It does convey the grief of a husband/father who has lost a partner and also the struggles of the children. However its modern, somewhat surrealistic style does not convey the grief in ways that are easy, for me at least, to internalize. I was hoping for a tool to use with people I counsel, people who are all too often faced with loss, and I decided after reading it that most people with whom I work would have a harder time identifying than I did. For one thing, the "stench" and profanity of Crow might actually make coping with grief for many people more difficult. It is difficult to find an effective tool to assist in the very difficult journey through grief. Unfortunately, from my perspective, this black little novel is not it.

Awesome, unique, unusual, different

O que é esse livro de estreia de Max Porter, GRIEF IS THE THING WITH FEATHERS? Um romance? Uma novela? Uma coletânea de poemas interligados? Uma peça de teatro? A verdade é que a obra rompe com fronteiras de gênero, criando um ser híbrido que transita em diversos gêneros, formas e resulta num soco literário repleto de poesia e verdade. O protagonista é um Pai, cuja mulher morreu de forma inesperada há pouco, e ele precisa, além de enfrentar o seu luto, cuidar de seus dois filhos gêmeos e ainda pequenos. Fora isso, ele se comprometeu a escrever um estudo sobre o Corvo de Ted Hughes (não confundir com o Corvo de Poe, pois, no original são dois nomes diferentes Crow [o do Hughes], e Raven [o do Poe],e são dois animais bastante diferentes http://www.diffen.com/difference/Crow_vs_Raven). Em meio a tudo isso, eis que aparece em sua porta um Crow, um animal intrometido, mas que começa não apenas o ajudar a lidar com o luto, como também cuidar dos filhos, organizar sua vida, sua casa e as memórias – além de funcionar como uma espécie de coautor do estudo, que “viola, ilustra e polui” a obra analisada. Porter, que é editor na Granta, na Inglaterra, transita entre os gêneros sem fazer alarde. Praticamente composta de pequenos monólogos personagens – os filhos são tratados como uma entidade única, chamados apenas de Boys – a narrativa vai do onírico ao realismo, passando pela fantasia, o gótico e o cômico. Tudo permeado, claro, pela melancolia da dor profunda e do processo de luto. O Crow que surge quase como uma figura mítica, e explica que o luto “é tudo. É o tecido da individualidade, e belamente caótico. Compartilha características matemáticas com muitas formas naturais”. O titulo, Porter adaptou do famoso poema de Emily Dickinson, “Hope is a Thing with Feathers” (http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/42889), e faz sua própria interpretação sobre as formas como a esperança pode se materializar, mostrando que pode não “cantar a canção sem palavras”, como diz a poeta, e pode vir em outras formas – Crow diz que também adquire forma de “médico ou fantasma”, mas só ele pode “fazer coisas que outras figuras não podem, como devorar a tristeza, des-nascer segredos, e ter batalhas teatrais com a linguagem e Deus”. Enfim, respondendo à pergunta que ele mesmo faz: um Corvo serve para muitas, até para trazer a esperança.

Buen libro, compra en librerías locales no en Amazon

5 stars Wow. To begin with I will just say again, wow. This book surprised and intrigued me, not with its story line or creative plot, not with inventive world-building, but with its sheer force of will, with its language, and its comprehensive reaching. The best descriptor I can think of for this novella, is that, at its core, this book is a eulogy to mourning, to grief. A disruptive and broken poetics dictates the pace as language, embodying mourning, confronts the paradoxes and gritty realities inherent in grief. Max Porter delivers a varied exploration of reaction—visceral and complex—to loss in the form of a delusion, a coping mechanism, a crow, a thing with feathers. In short, this wonderfully written, uniquely conceived novella is a many-faceted reflection on human response to grief.

One of the most uncoventional and poetic works about grief and loss.