CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE grew up in Nigeria. Her work has been translated into thirty languages and has appeared in various publications, including The New Yorker, The New York Times, Granta, The O. Henry Prize Stories, Financial Times, and Zoetrope: All-Story. She is the author of the novels Purple Hibiscus, which won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award; Half of a Yellow Sun, which was the recipient of the Women’s Prize for Fiction “Winner of Winners” award; Americanah, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award; the story collection The Thing Around Your Neck; and the essays We Should All Be Feminists and Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions, both national bestsellers. A recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, she divides her time between the United States and Nigeria.
“This intimate work implores, jerks us out of callousness, moves
grief closer . . . Notes on Grief lays a path by which we might
mourn our individual traumas among the aggregate suffering of this
harrowing time. Our guide, Adichie, is uncloaked, full of
‘wretched, roaring rage,’ teaching us how to gather our disparate
selves and navigate the still-raging pandemic. In the texture of
many of these sentences you can almost feel where the writer has
resisted bearing down with her refining tools—language and
memory—so as to allow her emotional reality to remain splintered
and sharp. Adichie is a consummate world-builder . . . Over the
course of these 30 fragments, we witness a shift in perspective, an
assurance that whatever comes next will never have been created
before.”
—Sarah M. Broom, The New York Times Book Review [front-page
review]
“Notes on Grief makes visceral the experience of death and
grieving. In poetic bursts of imagistic prose that mirror the
fracturing of self after the death of a beloved parent, Adichie
constructs a narrative of mourning — of haunting and of love. Notes
on Grief becomes a work larger than its slim size, universal
in the experience of the loss of a parent, and the struggle to
mourn that loss.”
—Hope Wabuke, NPR.org
“Elegantly spare . . . brutally frank . . With raw eloquence, Notes
on Grief is both achingly personal and stunningly familiar to
anyone who has felt the ‘permanent scattering’ [of grief]. Written
and published less than a year after her father’s death, Adichie’s
pain on these pages is so palpable that one can almost taste its
bitterness. She captures the bewildering messiness of loss in
a society that requires serenity, when you’d rather just scream.
Grief is impolite . . . Adichie’s words put welcome, authentic
voice to this most universal of emotions, which is also one of the
most universally avoided.”
—Leslie Gray Streeter, The Washington Post
“Adichie unflinchingly gazes into the black hole of grief as
through a telescope, exposing intimate moments and public
convulsions while tapping her roots to channel a spectrum of
emotions . . . Candid, elegant . . . The writer meets the
moment.”
—Oprah Daily, “20 Best Books of May”
“A story of loss achingly of its time . . . Adichie struggles not
only with the shock of her unexpected loss but also with the
impossibility of distance and by extension, access. She also
realizes that each step toward the official recognition of [her
father’s] passing will force her to accept that it has happened. I
really appreciated Adichie’s discomfort with the language of grief.
Books often come to you just when you need them . . . A book on
grief is not the kind of book you want to have to give to anyone.
But here we are.”
—Allison Arieff, San Francisco Chronicle
“A poignant reflection… Adichie recounts her efforts to cope with
her loss, to accept condolences, to carry out the inevitable
rituals of death. Her Dad emerges as a wise, kind, thoughtful and
understanding presence throughout Notes on Grief . . .The
loveliest writing, however, is not about James Nwoye Adichie, but
about the anguish and longing his death produces in those who
suffer his absence most acutely. In death, those we love
become more than we understood, more than we can ever remember
alone. Adichie appreciates this power.”
—Carlos Lozada, The Washington Post
“Adichie’s exquisitely forthright chronicle of grief generously
articulates the harrowing amplification of sorrow, helplessness,
and loss during the COVID-19 pandemic . . . An intimate and
essential illumination of a tragic time.”
—Booklist
“Spare and yet spiritually nutritious, the book serves as a
reflection of Adichie’s turmoil in loss. It is also an exquisitely
written tribute to her father, James Nwoye Adichie, who was
Nigeria’s first professor of statistics: his self-effacement, sense
of calm and wry humor shine through.”
—Catherine Taylor, The Guardian US
“Adichie's great strength is the authority of her voice, her moral
and emotional centeredness that draws the resistant close. Here,
she insists on her right to desolation in response to the singular
loss of her father.”
—Maureen Corrigan, “Fresh Air”
“It is the sense of disbelief, the messiness and confusion with
which we meet the loss of our loved ones, that Adichie describes so
well. Upon hearing the news about her father’s death, she
collapses, and she writes about that collapse unsparingly . . .
More than any other piece I’ve read recently, Adichie’s book
captures the harshness of mourning in a time of pandemic.”
—Nilanjana Roy, Financial Times
“Fierce, tender and raw . . . In Notes on Grief, Adichie
reveals a more private self. This is a cathartic work for
Adichie, a way to keep alive the spirit of her father by
telling his stories. And in her writing, her father shines as
a man of deep kindness and integrity, a dry wit and successful
academic who was unstinting in his support of his daughter’s
ambitions.”
—Anderson Tepper, Los Angeles Times
“It is the sense of disbelief, the messiness and confusion with
which we meet the loss of our loved ones, that Adichie describes so
well. Upon hearing the news about her father’s death, she
collapses, and she writes about that collapse unsparingly . . .
More than any other piece I’ve read recently, Adichie’s book
captures the harshness of mourning in a time of pandemic.”
—Nilanjana Roy, Financial Times
“What is most memorable in this tribute is Adichie’s father’s love
for his family and their enduring love for him. Adichie simply
calls him 'the loveliest man.' A raw, moving account of mourning
and loss, Adichie’s memoir reminds us there is no right or wrong
way to grieve and that celebrating life every day is the best way
to honor our loved ones.”
—Sarojini Seupersad, BookPage
“Elegant, moving . . . An affecting paean to the author’s father,
James Nwoye Adichie. The first professor of statistics in his
country, James lived an eventful and sometimes fraught life. Funny
and principled, he died during the pandemic—not of the virus but
kidney disease. Adichie moves through some of the classic stages of
grief, including no small amount of anger. . . Eventually, she
reflects on a newfound awareness of mortality and finds a ‘new
urgency’ to live her life and do her work.” —Kirkus [starred
review]
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