Grief is the Thing with Feathers

Told from different angles, this is the story of a family who have lost a mother, a wife and the organiser of their lives. Through the misery of the events, the father creates an imaginary crow, who helps the father complete his work, understand the children’s grief and survive life without his wife.

The writing style is modern, random, jumpy and full of non censored language which created a witty, dark and sarcastic environment; the crow was both cruel and nurturing whilst bamboozling me with the random nature of its mind. I felt it worked perfectly for the topic this book tackles but I can appreciate this style is rather like marmite… you’ll either love it or you’ll hate it.

At just over a hundred pages, it’s on the short side but what a complex little book it was! The rhyming, rhetorical and questioning nature of this book can easily outsmart those that aren’t quick-thinking. There were countless paragraphs that required a reread for me to make sense of what the message was and there are still parts I can’t get my head around!
This could be seen as either a negative or positive quality dependent on your mood: negative for when you’re too tired and can’t understand why the book is playing a game of trick or treat with you; positive when you’re in the mood work to read riddle styled paragraphs!

I liked that there wasn’t a great level of individualism to the characters within this book, it was just a family who were naturally progressing through grief. Why is this a good thing? – because it allows moments within the book to resonate with any individual quicker.

This book is like nothing else I’ve read this year; it was incredibly smart, thought provoking and honest. I imagine a lot of my blog readers would enjoy it BUT I’d warn you all to download a sample first so you can judge whether or not the marmite writing style is to your taste.

Until next time, Chloé x