It took me a few months to review this book (I read it in December 2018), the reason for it is twofold: on one hand, I was dreading reviewing it, as with every book I loved, on the other every time I opened it on a random page to refresh my memory of it I ended up reading it again. Which in itself may be enough of a review…

The timing though seems to be good, as Porter’s second book Lanny hit the shelves a few weeks ago. I am still struggling with reviewing it. What do we have: a man who lost his wife, he has two sons, we also have a crow that appears a few days after the death.

We do also have a whirlwind of emotions, from raw pain, through despair all the way to hysterical laughter and actual laugh. In the hundred pages we get to experience a full spectrum of emotions grief causes in the harshest way, raw (again, I know), gut-wrenching, but also human and funny. The crow is in turns mean, comforting, protective only to mercilessly make fun of his new family a second later. There is nothing calm about this book it tosses and turns, pushes and pulls, drags, kicks and punches, only to leave us breathless and laughing on the floor, all the time aware of how irreparable and unavoidable the loss is.

I have nothing more to say, other than I will be rereading it many, many times more.

Quotes from Grief is the Thing with Feathers