Grief Is The Thing With Feathers

‘Grief is the Thing with Feathers’ Max Porter’s first novel is an impressive, truthful and emotionally engaging work of fiction. It is a highly literary book, stylistically reminiscent of the great Modernist writers such as Joyce, pre-Finnegans Wake, and TS Eliot. It bursts with allusions and stream-of-consciousness passages, which are as poetic as they are true as they accurately express the many and varied stages of grief.

All too often ‘literary’ novels are a brief tour of the author’s most impressive, intellectual influences and bookish passions. This can be tiresome however ‘Grief is the Thing with Feathers’ wears its references and inspirations lightly.  Even the title alludes to an Emily Dickinson poem ‘Hope is the Thing With Feathers’.  However the primary inspiration that permeates the book is Ted Hughes poem ‘Crow’.

‘Crow’ is the heroic anti-hero of the novel, the chief protagonist whose role is to guide a young family through the devastating aftermath of death and loss.  Of the three narrative voices in the novel, Crow, a young father and his sons, Crows is the loudest and boldest.  Unsurprisingly so, as he is not experiencing the immobility and incomprehension caused by grief as experienced by the Father. 

Crow in turn, is like Hughes titular crow, a trickster and a dissembler yet also a healer and at times a babysitter for the children.  His rough and ready poetic babble focuses the family and helps them move towards resolution and dissipation of the pain of loss and never once loses the interest of the reader.  From the minute he enters the lives of this family to the minute he exits, when Crow is centre stage the reader is compelled to listen to him.

The father, a Hughes scholar and obsessive could easily have been portrayed as a clichéd academic whose response to the loss of his wife would be to retreat into academia and books and forget the outside world including his children. Porter avoids this trope effortlessly, yes the father is a dreamy, emotional character but his sons provide focus for him and a reason for him to continue living. They need him as much as he needs them.  The dual narrative voice of the twin boys is grounded in reality and is a convincing representation of how children deal with loss and absorb it into the everyday.

Whilst the novel is a meditation on loss and grief it is never a depressing read. There are light hearted passages and re-telling of fairy stories and fables within the novel that throw the poetic meditations on grief and the pain it causes into sharp relief.  

Porter’s control of the narrative, the asides and the fleeting thoughts and afterthoughts of his characters is masterly as is his evocation of loss and reconciliation to loss.  Hyperbole it may be but this short novel marks the debut of a writer not afraid to take risks with subject matter and structure, to be emotionally honest and who writes beautifully crafted, erudite prose and poetry.

‘Grief is The Thing With Feathers’ is published by Faber and Faber and has been long-listed for the Guardian First Book Award.