Max Porter works in publishing. He lives in South London with his wife and children. Grief Is the Thing with Feathers is his first book.
* Winner of of the International Dylan Thomas Prize *
* Rights sold in thirteen countries *
* Finalist for the Guardian First Book Award *
* Finalist for the Goldsmiths Prize * "As resonant, elliptical and
distilled as a poem, Grief Is the Thing With Feathers is one of the
most moving, wildly inventive first novels you're likely to
encounter this year. It's funny -- in a jet-black way -- yet also
fiercely emotional, capturing the painful sucker-punch of loss with
a fresh immediacy that rivals Joan Didion's The Year of Magical
Thinking. . . . Like C.S. Lewis' A Grief Observed, Julian Barnes'
Levels of Life, Helen MacDonald's H is for Hawk . . . Porter's
unusual novel puts grief in its place not by dismissing it, but by
confronting it dead-on as a painful but inescapable part of life.
Grief is the Thing With Feathers is a wondrous, supremely literary,
ultimately hopeful little book."--NPR.org "Grief Is the Thing with
Feathers" argues that books, literature and poetry can help save
us. This book is a sublime and painful conjuring of a family's
grief and the misfit creature with the power to both haunt and help
them. It is a complex story, not simply-told or sparse: Nothing is
missing. Let it be a call for more great books of this length to be
recognized for what they are -- whole. Extraordinary is a book with
feathers."--Los Angeles Times "Like a book of hours for the
bereaved. . . . Mr. Porter gives expression to grief in all its
emotional manifestations. . . . Unpredictably playful, [filled]
with sarcasm, absurdity and black-winged humor."--The Wall Street
Journal "Piercing the wordplay and abstractions and flights of
fancy are the sharp specifics that make the family's loss clear and
their grief that much more real. . . . [Grief Is the Thing with
Feathers transforms] the indescribable absence that is grief into
palpable, undeniable life."--Star Tribune (Minneapolis) "[A]
bizarre and brilliant debut. . . . What keeps the story from being
excessively familiar is Porter's sense of detail . . . as well as
his imaginative and elegant approaches to structure and style. . .
. Simultaneously straightforward and mysterious, the book
illustrates the need for and calls into question "moving on, as a
concept."--Chicago Tribune "A powerful, surreal novella-poem of
grief and healing. Devastated by the loss of his wife, Dad
struggles to take care of his boys, himself, and finish his book on
the poetry of Ted Hughes. Crow (a man-size black bird) moves in,
taking the role of wild but tender shepherd to the family."--San
Francisco Chronicle "Porter's debut has meatiness to it--a
denseness of allegory and allusion; a mélange of fairy tale, fable
and dream. . . . The family's sadness is rendered exquisitely, both
in figurative and prosaic language. . . . Layered with pathos,
allusion, and humor, Grief is the Thing with Feathers is more than
the sum of its composite elements. Pithy yet rich, the novel is a
moving and astounding debut. Porter's Crow is as vivid as Hughes'
original, and his writing no less memorable."--Electric Literature
"Porter's collage of prose and lineated poetry is the very opposite
of self-help. [ Grief is the Thing with Feathers] does not seek to
offer answers, but instead brilliantly mimics the chaos of the
grieving brain, offering a vision of how loss dramatically alters
it. . . . Porter's book is a gift in its understanding of the
sounds and reverberations of grief."--The Rumpus "Allusive and
half-poetic, Porter's tribute to a family's grief and to Crow, a
cycle of Ted Hughes poems, is both simple and invigoratingly
bizarre: A Hughes scholar and his two sons mourn the accidental
death of their mother with the help, it seems, of a plastic crow
come to life. "Dad," "Crow," and "Boys" take turns narrating,
tracing the arc of a mourning process that will neither be rushed
nor slowed. You don't have to read Hughes's Crow first, but you
might as well; both books are short, strange, and
timeless."--Vulture "Remarkable. . . . One-of-a-kind. . . .
Heartbreaking. . . . Brilliant."--The Atlantic "[Porter captures]
not only the puzzle of a father-son interaction but also its music,
its varied and unpredictable textures."--New Republic "At once
surprising, terrifying, and poignant."--Broadly "A heartbreaking
and life-affirming meditation on the dislocating power of grief. .
. . Porter's characters express their feelings through observations
that are profound and simply phrased. . . . The powerful emotions
evoked in this novel will resonate with anyone who has experienced
love, loss, and mourning."--Publishers Weekly "Porter delivers a
staggering tale of a father grappling with the sudden loss of his
wife in this sharply poetic and darkly stunning debut novel. . . .
A truly exceptional work of fiction. . . . Readers will not soon
forget Porter's distinct style."--Booklist, starred review
"Porter's daringly strange story skirts disbelief to speak,
engagingly and effectively, of the pain this world inflicts, of
where the ghosts go, and of how we are left to press on and endure
it all. Elegant, imaginative, and perfectly paced. A contribution
to the literature of grief and to literature in general."--Kirkus
Reviews, starred review "A whimsical and ultimately pleasing
perspective on grief . . . utterly original."--Shelf Awareness "A
haunting debut."--Brooklyn Magazine "A short, singular, and
entirely alluring book that defies convention, and definition,
Grief Is the Thing With Feathers works like a form of literary
magic."--The National Book Review "Grief Is the Thing with Feathers
. . . follows a father of two through the year after the death of
his wife. The chapters are compressed, poetic vignettes that evoke
the chimera of grief through suggestion and indirection. And then,
more evocative still: the arrival of a giant, metempsychotic raven
straight out of Ted Hughes's Crow. You quickly forget that the book
is weird as hell, because it is also beautiful as hell, moving as
hell, and funny as hell."--Garth Risk Hallberg in The Millions'
"Year in Reading" "Grief Is the Thing with Feathers gives the form
of the novel shades of parables and poetry. . . . Max Porter's
debut novel is endearing and powerful, and the last page will leave
you stunned."--Steven Tran, Word Bookstore, Brooklyn, NY "An
electrifying novel. . . . Unique in its structure, imagery, and the
character of wild Crow, the book is simple and uncomplicated in its
appeal to the reader's own understandings of life, death, grief,
dreams, and reconciliation, while offering new ways to think about
these universal themes as the book comes to a perfect
conclusion."--Seeing the World Through Books "Porter offers a
fresh, invigorating treatment of bereavement. . . . Grief Is the
Thing with Feathers shatters familiar notions of what we think we
know about loss and mourning, transforming the grief narrative into
something darker, beastlier, not quite comforting, yet also oddly
refreshing, and even funny. Max Porter's compressed debut is a
richly complex and captivating feathered miracle."--The Northwest
Review of Books "In this slyly funny and thrillingly original work,
Max Porter somehow pulls a brand new story out of the darkest
despair."--Jenny Offill "I'm not sure I've read anything like Max
Porter's book before. It stunned me, full of beauty, hilarity, and
thick black darkness. It will stay with me for a very long
time."--Evie Wyld "One of the only accurate representations of
grief I have ever found in literature. [Max Porter] combines verse,
narrative, essay, myth, drama, jokes, bad dreams, and the language
of therapy in a way that seems magical, permanent, utterly
integrated, as impossible to distill to its components as it would
be impossible to remove or isolate grief from love, or from life
itself. Says Crow of grief, 'It is everything. It is the fabric of
selfhood.'"--Sarah Manguso "Less a novel than a totally new and
feathered thing--hilarious, poetic, cheeky, postmodern, I guess,
but in the most earnest and emotionally forthright way. I was as
gripped as I was stunned by Porter's linguistic daredevilry, his
intelligence, his emotional go-for-the-gut-ness. I loved this
book."--Heidi Julavits "Utterly astonishing. Truly, truly
remarkable."--Nathan Filer "Grief Is the Thing with Feathers is
heartrending, blackly funny, deeply resonant, a perfect summation
of what it means to lose someone but still to love the world-and if
it reminds publishers that the best books aren't always the ones
that can be pigeonholed or precis-ed or neatly packaged, so much
the better."--Sarah Crown, The Guardian "Grief Is the Thing With
Feathers is the most exquisite little flight of a story captured
between hardback covers, and its appearance has been crafted to
show us that we are in for something unusual. This deeply moving
book about death and its grief-stricken consolations--love and
art--appears to be no more than a scattering of text, dialogue and
poetry that lifts and settles on the page, the frailest sort of
thing. Yet as we read on, we become aware that the way it has been
put together is robust indeed. . . . Grief is the Thing with
Feathers shows us another way of thinking about the novel and its
capabilities, taking us through a dark and emotionally fraught
subject, one airy page after another, as though transported by
wings."--Kirsty Gunn, The Guardian "Like [Ali Smith], Porter has
the language-sense to know how to use simple words to get at the
toughest of subjects. Like her, he knows how to be playful and
serious at once. . . . A blast and a breeze and, strangely, a
delight."--Jonathan Gibbs, The Independent "A meditation, in
vignettes, on grief, love and literature. . . . Funny and warm and
real, this little book is one to linger on and savour."--Francesca
Wade, The Telegraph "Captures some beautiful truths about love and
loss. . . . [It] works because of what it demands its reader
provide: we have all lost someone, or love someone whom we fear
losing, and so in the gaps and silences provided by this book we
are invited to supply our own grief, our own love, our own hope,
and this transforms the work into a luminous reading
experience."--Anna Girling, Times Literary Supplement "A beguiling
literary hybrid, highly deserving of its Guardian First Book Award
longlisting."--Lucy Sholes, The Observer "One of the most
surprising books this year, full of vitality and freshness. . . .
Moving and ultimately uplifting."--The Spectator (UK) "Part prose,
part poetry, [Grief is the Thing with Feathers] is a lyrical
explanation of grief and healing; exquisite passages of brilliance
and beauty abound throughout."--Irish Times "Grief is the Thing
with Feathers, by Max Porter (Faber), is his debut and it is a book
to cherish. It has the perfect balance of being very sad and very
funny, full of darkness and full of light."--Irish Times "I read
[Grief Is the Thing With Feathers] through . . . and ended it
amazed and disturbed and uplifted and shattered. I've never read
anything like it. It's dazzlingly good. . . . Anyone who has ever
loved someone, or lost someone, or both, will be gripped by it. . .
. Crow is the blackest, blankest bad-guy I've met for years:
Christopher Walken cross-bred with The Joker (in
feathers)."--Robert Macfarlane
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