After his wife dies suddenly in an unexplained accident, a man and his two young sons are faced with a grief that threatens to consume them. Soon after, the Crow of myth comes to stay with them, promising to stay with them until he is no longer needed. Crow is just like he is in the fables: a trickster and a villain, but he is also a solace to the family struck-through with sorrow.
The publisher’s description calls Grief is the Thing with Feathers “part novella, part polyphonic fable, part essay on grief,” and I have to agree. Porter has taken a straight-forward narrative – a father and his sons work to regain themselves after suffering a tragic loss – and infuses it with the realistic unreality of fable and writes it to reflect the disjointed way we remember our lives during times we are faced with overwhelming grief. He infuses a bit of madness here, a spot of humor there, and an underlying feeling of being lost but maybe (hopefully) not forever. The wordplay and flow reminded me of beat poetry, but the content and story feel very 21st Century.
I love both short stories and novellas. When done well, they take a story and strip away all of the extra, anything that is unessential, leaving only the truth behind. Porter has done just that. Don’t let the small size fool you (it’s only 128 pages), this book is not light reading.
-Portia Kapraun
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