Grief personified

http://looneybooks79.blog/2025/10/07/grief-is-the-thing-with-feathers/

When a husband and his two sons loose their wife/mother, grief becomes a huge part of their life. Even though the boys seem to be able to cope with it a bit better than the father, there's always the looming pain of not having their mother around. While they try to live with the loss, a crow enters their life. This crow is grief personified and will stay with them for the time they need to overcome the loss.

'Grief is the thing with feathers' is Max Porter's debut novel. And it's one with a punch. From the start of this rather compact story, you are taken into the pain and grief of this family. The story switches between the viewpoints of either the dad or the boys or the (human-sized) crow that stays with them. The crow is a babysitter, is a trickster, is pain and grief personified and is a therapist. But I also felt that the crow was there to remind them of the loss and kept the wound open for this family. To remind them that they were a whole and are now ripped apart by death.

"There's a feather on my pillow. Pillows are made of feathers, go to sleep."

As I have read, Porter took inspiration from Ted Hughes' (the dad is writing a book on Hughes, if I'm not mistaken) poem 'Crow: from the life and songs of a crow' (I have to admit, I have never heard of it so for me this link was not a part of my reading experience).

The story in itself is part poem, part dialogue, part obituary, part therapy... it has so many layers, so much to offer. And as far as I'm concerned, this is the best thing I have read by Porter so far! This one touched every button, even though at times it feels surreal, a bit uncomfortable and all over the place. But that is the way Porter writes, I have noticed.

The title of this book is taken from a poem by Emily Dickson (it refers to the sentence 'Hope is the thing with feathers')

This book was adapted into a play and into a movie with Benedict Cumberbatch, The Thing with Feathers, in 2025. (I am very curious about the movie adaptations of Porter's work, because I don't think they're very easy material to transform to the big screen. In October '25, the adaptation for 'Shy' (his most recent novel) will be released on Netflix (title: Steve) and I'm waiting impatiently to see what Tim Mielants did with the source material. (The movie has Cillian Murphy as Steve)