Max Porter lost his father when he was just six years old. He has described his first book, Grief is the Thing with Feathers, as “a love letter to my dad”.
A huge bestseller when it was published in 2015, it is one of many books in literary history that deal with grief – whether it is the author’s own experience, or a grief observed. It tells the story of the husband and sons of a woman who has died suddenly. The three are not coping with the shock and absence of this bereavement. Into this situation comes a most unlikely character: Crow.
We have been alerted to this possibility. The title of the book is adapted from Emily Dickinson’s poem “Hope” is the thing with feathers; and the epigraph is also taken from her poetry: “That Love is all there is…”.
