Post by Glynn Young, author of the novels Dancing Priest, and A Light Shining, and the newly published Dancing King, and Poetry at Work. Photo by Seabamirum, Creative Commons, via Flickr. Porter reads from Grief Is the Thing with Feathers

Max Porter is interviewed by Electric Literature Published in Britain in 2015 and the recipient of a number of awards and recognitions, Grief Is the Thing with Feathers is one remarkable novel-uh, poetry collection-um, something. He is executive director of the literary magazine Granta and Portobello Books and lives in south London with his family. You’re well hooked into it by the time you figure out that Crow represents grief, and that Crow is not only necessary and important but ultimately a good thing for this stricken family. Grief Is the Thing with Feathers is crazy, mesmerizing, fascinating, and creative, not to mention being one of the most unusual novels you might come across. Give it a kick and a shell wouldįall out. Important Picasso is,’ and my brother said,Ĭircular wall of red sand that was once in Here’s one of the “chapters” in this “novel.” But in some odd way they know things will eventually right themselves. They know they’ve lost their mother, and they miss her, sometimes terribly. The boys go on about their business of being boys. He tells stories that begin with “Once upon a time.” He watches over the boys. Crow sometimes feels persecuted, and he talks about the hundreds of memoirs he’s written. He leaves feathers on pillows and scattered around the family’s flat. He knows he has a job to do, and when it’s done, he’ll leave. He represents the black presence of grief in a family that’s been upended. And Crow? Crow is that creature with feathers and a smart mouth and a keen insight. It’s no surprise that Dad is more aware of grief than the twin boys he’s a bit of an “overthinker” and an intellectual type, and they are, well, just boys. That thematic line is grief, the grief involved with the loss of a wife and mother. It doesn’t follow a straight narrative line. It begins with a corrected version of an Emily Dickinson poem. It’s divided into three parts (like Caesar’s Gaul?) but contains no chapters, unless you count a poem as a chapter (I don’t). Physically, the text looks like a poetry collection. It moves, jumps, shifts, and occasionally leaps between three narrative voices-Dad, Boys, and Crow. It’s officially classified as a novel, but it doesn’t read like any novel I’ve read before. Is Grief Is the Thing with Feathers by British writer Max Porter a novel, a collection of poems, both a novel and poetry, neither one, or some new literary genre we haven’t seen before?

Grief is the thing with feathers pages