Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Parts 1 & 2 by JK Rowling, adapted by John Tiffany and Jack Thorne

Summary from Goodreads:
The Eighth Story. Nineteen Years Later.

Based on an original new story by J.K. Rowling, Jack Thorne and John Tiffany, a new play by Jack Thorne, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is the eighth story in the Harry Potter series and the first official Harry Potter story to be presented on stage. The play will receive its world premiere in London’s West End on July 30, 2016.

It was always difficult being Harry Potter and it isn’t much easier now that he is an overworked employee of the Ministry of Magic, a husband and father of three school-age children.

While Harry grapples with a past that refuses to stay where it belongs, his youngest son Albus must struggle with the weight of a family legacy he never wanted. As past and present fuse ominously, both father and son learn the uncomfortable truth: sometimes, darkness comes from unexpected places.

My kingdom for enough money to fly to London and see this live.

OK, so everyone under the sun is going to have a review of HP8.  I'm going to throw out a few thoughts here and otherwise advise you to read it yourself if you want to have an opinion.  I'm going to try not to spoil the plot.

First, I did like this a lot.  I thought it was very intriguing and well-paced (Act II cliff-hanger, whaaaaaat) with a lot of good ideas.  Rowling plays with a lot of themes she couldn't in the original seven books.  What kind of a parent would Harry be and how would he deal with a child both so very different and so very much the same as himself?  How does being "the boy who lived" still weigh on Harry?  How does the legacy weigh on his children?  How do his adult relationships change?

Second, given that this is a play there is no narrator unlike the previous seven books.  All those books - with the exception of the first chapter/prologue of each - were narrated via Harry's limited, and often quite biased, perspective.  With a play, there is no filter.  Each character speaks directly to the reader/audience.  And I find that the most interesting aspect of Cursed Child.  How would the series have turned out if Rowling had used a different type of narrator or shifted the perspective between characters?  Very different, I think.

Third, the stagecraft required of this play is going to be of the mind-bogglingly difficult kind.  I would love to see that set design.  (And the stage directions are very amusing to read.)

Dear FTC: I bought my copy of this book - OF COURSE - after flying back from Atlanta in the morning and working a release party at the bookstore at night.

Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

Summary from Goodreads:
The unforgettable New York Times best seller begins with the story of two half-sisters, separated by forces beyond their control: one sold into slavery, the other married to a British slaver. Written with tremendous sweep and power, Homegoing traces the generations of family who follow, as their destinies lead them through two continents and three hundred years of history, each life indeliably drawn, as the legacy of slavery is fully revealed in light of the present day.

Effia and Esi are born into different villages in eighteenth-century Ghana. Effia is married off to an Englishman and lives in comfort in the palatial rooms of Cape Coast Castle. Unbeknownst to Effia, her sister, Esi, is imprisoned beneath her in the castle’s dungeons, sold with thousands of others into the Gold Coast’s booming slave trade, and shipped off to America, where her children and grandchildren will be raised in slavery. One thread of Homegoing follows Effia’s descendants through centuries of warfare in Ghana, as the Fante and Asante nations wrestle with the slave trade and British colonization. The other thread follows Esi and her children into America. From the plantations of the South to the Civil War and the Great Migration, from the coal mines of Pratt City, Alabama, to the jazz clubs and dope houses of twentieth-century Harlem, right up through the present day, Homegoing makes history visceral, and captures, with singular and stunning immediacy, how the memory of captivity came to be inscribed in the soul of a nation.

I missed Yaa Gyasi's signing line at BEA (rats) but I was able to get approved for an Edelweiss galley and for that I am so grateful (Gyasi will be signing at Prairie Lights in October, yay for Iowa Writer's Workshop alums).  This is a book that will stay with me for a long time.

The structure of this novel serves up the plot to perfection.  Once Effia and Esi are introduced in adjacent chapters - in settings both sublimely beautiful and terrible - the plot unfolds through two branches of the family tree.  Every chapter follows a subsequent generation, alternating branches, Effia's line then Esi's line.  Reading other reviews, I noted that some readers were frustrated that Gyasi changed narrators so often. Just when we wish to have more time with a character, we jump branches and generations.  But I thought this was such a good way of representing the pull of time.  The characters cannot go back to have questions answered, to find things that were lost, or make different choices. Time only goes forward.  This was especially true for those chapters set among Esi's descendants who were sold into slavery in the American South - there was no going back to know one's grandparents, or home village, or ancestral tongue.  Brutal.

Homegoing is so well-crafted it's almost unbelievable that this is a debut. This book will break you, in a good way.  Keep the tissues handy.

Dear FTC: I received a digital galley from the publisher via Edelweiss.

Riverine: A Memoir From Anywhere but Here by Angela Palm

Summary from Goodreads:
Angela Palm grew up in a place not marked on the map, her house set on the banks of a river that had been straightened to make way for farmland. Every year, the Kankakee River in rural Indiana flooded and returned to its old course while the residents sandbagged their homes against the rising water. From her bedroom window, Palm watched the neighbor boy and loved him in secret, imagining a life with him even as she longed for a future that held more than a job at the neighborhood bar. For Palm, caught in this landscape of flood and drought, escape was a continually receding hope.

Though she did escape, as an adult Palm finds herself drawn back, like the river, to her origins. But this means more than just recalling vibrant, complicated memories of the place that shaped her, or trying to understand the family that raised her. It means visiting the prison where the boy that she loved is serving a life sentence for a brutal murder. It means trying to chart, through the mesmerizing, interconnected essays of Riverine, what happens when a single event forces the path of her life off course.

Riverine is defined as something either formed by a river or situated on the banks of a river.  In Angela Palm's memoir Riverine, she begins her story in the house her family lived in as a child, set upon an artificially created bank of the Kankakee River in rural Indiana.  Every seasonal flood shows that the river constantly returns to its former banks.  Even though her family eventually moves away from that river bank, Palm continually returns to the subject of that house, that river bank.  Although she has moved away, finished school, and married, she is struck by the ways that early environment shaped herself as opposed to how it shaped her friend, and first love, Corey.

This is a beautiful and evocative memoir.  Her exploration of the prison system that Corey inhabits was brief but very well-researched and written.  The strength of the writing fades a bit in the last 50 pages but overall it is a very vivid and compelling work.

Dear FTC: I received an ARC of this book from the publisher.

Once Upon a Moonlit Night by Elizabeth Hoyt (Maiden Lane #10.5)

Summary from Goodreads:
From New York Times bestselling author Elizabeth Hoyt comes a delightful Maiden Lane novella that begins once upon a moonlit night—and ends wickedly, wonderfully ever after...

Hippolyta Royle is running for her life. Pursued by hounds on a cold rainy night, the heiress flags down a passing carriage and throws herself at the mercy of the coach's occupant. Whoever this handsome traveler may be, he is her only hope to escape a terrible fate. But should he agree to escort her to safety, he's in for much more than he bargained for.

At first Matthew Mortimer doesn't believe Hippolyta's story, that she's a fabulously wealthy heiress who's been kidnapped. He assumes she's a beggar, an actress, or worse. But once his new travel companion washes the mud from her surprisingly lovely face, and they share a breathtaking kiss, there is no turning back.

Once Upon a Moonlit Night picks up immediately after Hippolyta Royce leaves the narrative of Duke of Sin on horseback, in the dark, barefoot, and in her shift.

(Let me explain...no there is too much, let me sum up:  in Duke of Sin, the sociopathic Duke of Montgomery, his plan to blackmail Hippolyta into marriage having been foiled by his housekeeper Bridget, has kidnapped Hippolyta to "ruin" her in Society's eyes (and to annoy Bridget, who he wants to shag senseless) so Bridget craftily, but hastily, set Hippolyta free in the middle of the Yorkshire countryside before laying a false trail and continuing the narrative of that book.  It's a good book, go read it.)

Hippolyta intends to catch the post back to London from the local village but is instead picked up by a passing carriage containing one Matthew Mortimer, a world traveler who has recently inherited an earldom, and an animal (no spoilers).  After much bickering, some humor, and travelling the two of them make it back to London.

This isn't a perfect novella - Matthew is kind of a jackass when he appears and there's a secondary mystery that isn't necessary.  But this is a sweet story. If you'd thought there was a bit of wrap-up missing from Duke of Sin (as I did) this will take care of it. I do wish this was a full novel since I think there's more to flesh out in Hippolyta's story.  She's a biracial heroine in a historical romance (her mother is Indian) and I feel like she got short-changed.

Also, petition to have D'Arque's granny in more books.

Dear FTC: I bought my copy of this novella.

The Hour of Land: A Personal Topography of America's National Parks by Terry Tempest Williams

Summary from Goodreads:
America’s national parks are breathing spaces in a world in which such spaces are steadily disappearing, which is why more than 300 million people visit the parks each year. Now Terry Tempest Williams, the author of the environmental classic Refuge and the beloved memoir When Women Were Birds, returns with The Hour of Land, a literary celebration of our national parks, an exploration of what they mean to us and what we mean to them.

From the Grand Tetons in Wyoming to Acadia in Maine to Big Bend in Texas and more, Williams creates a series of lyrical portraits that illuminate the unique grandeur of each place while delving into what it means to shape a landscape with its own evolutionary history into something of our own making. Part memoir, part natural history, and part social critique, The Hour of Land is a meditation and a manifesto on why wild lands matter to the soul of America.

OK, so, here's the deal.  I love Terry Tempest Williams, like love, Terry Tempest Williams.  If you have not read When Women Were Birds you need to remedy that immediately.  I was completely not worried about whether The Hour of Land would be good or not.  I had no worries.  I was more concerned with having enough unbroken time to put The Hour of Land into my brain.

Oh, it's so beautiful.  The book itself is a gorgeous physical object.  And Terry's writing is wonderful.  This is a beautiful, personal, and wide-ranging call to action to save our national parks and monuments from predation by industry, thoughtless people, and cultural insensitivity. Her writing moves from personal essay, to epistolary, to journalism all in one book. (I will be in Atlanta when she reads at Prairie Lights and I am extremely sad about this.)  I was really excited to see that Terry visited Effigy Mounds, which is in my state, and I am long overdue for a repeat visit there (last visited in middle school).

So this is a very short review to say go buy this and put it in you face immediately!

Dear FTC: I purchased my copy of this book because OF COURSE.

Zika: The Emerging Epidemic by Donald G. McNeil

Summary from Goodreads:
Until recently, Zika—once considered a mild disease—was hardly a cause for global panic. But as early as August 2015, doctors in northeast Brazil began to notice a trend: many mothers who had recently experienced symptoms of the Zika virus were giving birth to babies with microcephaly, a serious disorder characterized by unusually small heads and brain damage.

By early 2016, Zika was making headlines as evidence mounted—and eventually confirmed—that microcephaly is caused by the virus, which can be contracted through mosquito bites or sexually transmitted.

The first death on American soil, in February 2016, was confirmed in Puerto Rico in April. The first case of microcephaly in Puerto Rico was confirmed on May 13, 2016. The virus has been known to be transmitted by the Aedes aegypti or Yellow Fever mosquito, but now Aedes albopictus, the Asian Tiger mosquito, has been found to carry it as well, which means it might affect regions as far north as New England and the Great Lakes. Right now, at least 298 million people in the Americas live in areas “conducive to Zika transmission,” according to a recent study. Over the next year, more than 5 million babies will be born.

In Zika: The Emerging Epidemic, Donald G. McNeil Jr. sets the facts straight in a fascinating exploration of Zika’s origins, how it’s spreading, the race for a cure, and what we can do to protect ourselves now.

"The chapter titled Delaying Pregnancy is so paternalistic I want to set it on fire."

From a strict compiling of information and reportage, this is a pretty good book. However, there are some information gaps he doesn't address. What are the age and gender breakdown of known Zika cases (or if there are sero-surveys, those as well)? If those numbers are not known, why not? What is the symptomology of Zika in infants (bc if adults are getting bitten you know children of all ages are getting mosquito bites)? Is that information available?

Where the book breaks down is in a late chapter titled "Delaying Pregnancy". He lays out a paternalistic diatribe against the CDC and other agencies for not strictly recommending women avoid getting pregnant if they live in Zika-prone areas. And then he makes a "not all men" statement. I almost ripped those pages out of the book. He even quotes a respected ID physician who says everyone should just watch TV for six months. Crass, dudes, really crass. Guess what, guys? A statement that says WOMEN shouldn't get pregnant really ignores a lot of larger social issues. There are no health alerts that tell men they should be actively discussing the possibility of pregnancy with their heterosexual partners and why they should be equally responsible for providing birth control or understanding the wish for abstinence.  And now that there is evidence coming out that Zika can be transmitted sexually (and sometimes for months after acute symptoms have cleared up), all sexual partners need to be talking about condom use for STD prevention, not just for pregnancy prevention in heterosexual couples (this should just be good sexual education anyway...).

The last chapter "The Future" has a sum up that touches on the 2009 swine flu media panic but ignores the 2014 Ebola panic. It then closes with a sad case story about a woman who lost her pregnancy (and nearly died) during the 2009 swine flu epidemic and asks us all to be empathic. What? Try more objectivity, less opinion.

Dear FTC: I received a copy of this book for review from the publisher.

The Bourbon Thief by Tiffany Reisz

Summary from Goodreads:
From the internationally celebrated author of the Original Sinners series comes a brand-new tale of betrayal, revenge and a family scandal that bore a 150-year-old mystery

When Cooper McQueen wakes up from a night with a beautiful stranger, it's to discover he's been robbed. The only item stolen—a million-dollar bottle of bourbon. The thief, a mysterious woman named Paris, claims the bottle is rightfully hers. After all, the label itself says it's property of the Maddox family who owned and operated Red Thread Bourbon distillery since the last days of the Civil War until the company went out of business for reasons no one knows… No one except Paris.

In the small hours of a Louisville morning, Paris unspools the lurid tale of Tamara Maddox, heiress to the distillery that became an empire. But the family tree is rooted in tainted soil and has borne rotten fruit. Theirs is a legacy of wealth and power, but also of lies, secrets and sins of omission. The Maddoxes have bourbon in their blood—and blood in their bourbon. Why Paris wants the bottle of Red Thread remains a secret until the truth of her identity is at last revealed, and the century-old vengeance Tamara vowed against her family can finally be completed.

An actual Goodreads status update I made while reading The Bourbon Thief: "Ho, that took a left then a few switchbacks, a right and finally that left I was expecting. Well played, Tiffany."

Tiffany Reisz couldn't write a boring book if she tried. Southern Gothic plus crazy relatives plus social justice plus a drop of Scheherazade. And bourbon.  And a dash of historical fiction set both pre-Civil War and in the 1980s.  Reisz uses her frame story of Paris and Cooper and a night-long story to perfection.  I could hardly put this down, even to get work done during the day.  The plotting is just right - every time I thought I could predict where the story was going I was completely surprised.  So fun!

Now, for those who are regular readers of Tiffany Reisz and are used to books like The Original Sinners series, this isn't an erotic novel.  There is a fair amount of enthusiastic sex, especially at the beginning, but it isn't written as a play-by-play and there aren't BDSM elements.  However, there is some squickiness, much expected with Southern Gothics.

Dear FTC: I received a DRC of this book from the publisher via Edelweiss.

How Not to Fall by Emily Foster

Summary from Goodreads:

In her witty and breathtakingly sexy novel, Emily Foster introduces a story of lust, friendship, and other unpredictable experiments. . .

Data, research, scientific formulae--Annabelle Coffey is completely at ease with all of them. Men, not so much. But that's all going to change after she asks Dr. Charles Douglas, the postdoctoral fellow in her lab, to have sex with her. Charles is not only beautiful, he is also adorably awkward, British, brilliant, and nice. What are the odds he'd turn her down?

Very high, as it happens. Something to do with that whole student/teacher/ethics thing. But in a few weeks, Annie will graduate. As soon as she does, the unlikely friendship that's developing between them can turn physical--just until Annie leaves for graduate school. Yet nothing could have prepared either Annie or Charles for chemistry like this, or for what happens when a simple exercise in mutual pleasure turns into something as exhilarating and infernally complicated as love.

I don't read very many contemporary romances and even fewer New Adult romances (historicals are my jam).  However.  A few weeks ago, I was listening to a Smart Bitches podcast where the sex educator and researcher Emily Nagoski was talking about her book Come as You Are (which is EXCELLENT, of course, go read it) and women's sexual health, and oh yes, by the way her New Adult contemporary coming out in June, How Not to Fall, under the pseudonym Emily Foster.

Which was written partly as a counter to the problematic aspects regarding consent and sexual experiences in the 50 Shades series.
Whose main character is a super-smart neuroscience Indiana University undergrad who is going to the MD/PhD program at MIT.
Who is also a dancer.
Who has decided that before she graduates and leaves Bloomington she is going to proposition the smoking hot, adorkable, English postdoc in her lab.

GIVE IT TO ME NOW

This. Book. Is. SO. GOOD.  Annie is one of the smartest, sweetest, strongest, and most vulnerable heroines I have ever come across.  She's vulnerable precisely because she gives of herself wholeheartedly, whether it is her research or her dancing or her heart.  The book is narrated entirely from Annie's perspective, in the first person, and she's such a fascinating character.  (I identify with Annie so much for various reasons I won't go into here, but if you think she seems a bit much I can attest to the fact that she is basically me and this is the story of my junior/senior year of college with a few alterations.)

The absolute best, best part of this book is the wonderful exploration of the sexual relationship (and the intertwining personal feelings) between Annie and Charles.  Although Charles is the one who clearly has all the sexual experience - that Annie would like to benefit from - he is explicit in demanding that Annie must give him consent for any activity they undertake.  He is firm in abiding by the letter of the University rules about relationships between students and supervisors.  He takes Annie climbing at the gym (I had never thought of that as a sexy activity but whoa).  Everything is extremely sex-positive and consent-positive and Annie trusts him implicitly.  And that is how Charles breaks her heart - he holds himself back from her.

Emily Foster has a gift. I have never ugly-cried over a romance novel and this one made me do just that - this is raw and sweet and honest and too real. And Jesus, did that ending just twist the knife. This is possibly the most-real relationship I have ever read in a romance. And even though the sex is spectacular, even though I'd really like to know if Charles has a real-life counterpart, the nuts and bolts making up this couple are outstanding. And then there's all the science stuff and neurobiology and dancing and Wodehouse and the rest of this book is basically one giant epic nerd purr.

 I tweeted Emily BECAUSE FEELINGS.  And she told me there's a sequel!!!!!  So all is not lost! We'll get more Annie and Charles (and, apparently, Charles's perspective as well for some chapters)!

How Not to Fall is out June 28, next Tuesday - you know you want this!!

Dear FTC: I received a DRC of this book via NetGalley.

Florence Foster Jenkins: The Life of the World's Worst Opera Singer by Darryl W. Bullock

Summary from Goodreads:
"Probably the most complete and absolute lack of talent ever publicly displayed." —Life Magazine

Madame Jenkins couldn't carry a tune in a bucket: despite that, in 1944 at the age of 76, she played Carnegie Hall to a capacity audience and had celebrity fans by the score. Her infamous 1940s recordings are still highly-prized today. In his well-researched and thoroughly entertaining biography, Darryl W. Bullock tells of Florence Foster Jenkins meteoric rise to success and the man who stood beside her, through every sharp note.

Florence was ridiculed for her poor control of timing, pitch, and tone, and terrible pronunciation of foreign lyrics, but the sheer entertainment value of her caterwauling packed out theatres around the United States, with the 'singer' firmly convinced of her own talent, partly thanks to the devoted attention for her husband and manager St Clair Bayfield. Her story is one of triumph in the face of adversity, courage, conviction and of the belief that with dedication and commitment a true artist can achieve anything.

*Note: This is not the movie tie-in book, which can be found here and which I have not read.

I knew of Florence Foster Jenkins back when I was still singing (read: before I ruined my voice in college).  My voice teacher brought her up whenever she thought my singing was too "wooden" - Madame had a terrible voice, but so was very entertaining.  But I had never actually heard a recording of her voice.

Florence Foster Jenkins came out to somewhere between "good" and "ok." The actual book construction feels a little uneven and jumps around which gives the biography a "soapy" feel (he quotes the wretchedly bitchy Simon Doonan - in a soundbite that should just die and I'm not going to repeat it here - who wasn't even born when Madame died in 1944). However, what Bullock did do was evoke a lot of sympathy for his subject.  Florence Foster Jenkins was a moneyed Society lady who clearly LOVED classical music, had once been a talented classical pianist, and had the wherewithal to indulge her passion despite (or because of) her lack of voice.

You can still purchase Madame's recordings (just search "Florence Foster Jenkins" on iTunes and it appears they are being reissues on vinyl/CD). I can only take listening to the iTunes samples because it's just too awful. The recordings were made when she was in her 60s/70s and if she ever had a decent voice it is long gone. It's too cruel to laugh at her for merely being an eccentric elderly lady.

Dear FTC: I received an ARC of this book from the publisher at Book Expo America.

Constellation by Adrien Bosc (transl. Willard Wood)

Summary from Goodreads:
This best-selling debut novel from one of France’s most exciting young writers is based on the true story of the 1949 disappearance of Air France’s Lockheed Constellation and its famous passengers

On October 27, 1949, Air France’s new plane, the Constellation, launched by the extravagant Howard Hughes, welcomed thirty-eight passengers aboard. On October 28, no longer responding to air traffic controllers, the plane disappeared while trying to land on the island of Santa Maria, in the Azores. No one survived.

The question Adrien Bosc’s novel asks is not so much how, but why? What were the series of tiny incidents that, in sequence, propelled the plane toward Redondo Mountain? And who were the passengers? As we recognize Marcel Cerdan, the famous boxer and lover of Edith Piaf, and we remember the musical prodigy Ginette Neveu, whose tattered violin would be found years later, the author ties together their destinies: “Hear the dead, write their small legend, and offer to these thirty-eight men and women, like so many constellations, a life and a story.”


Constellation was the book that I almost grabbed straight out the publishing rep's hands during the Book Club Speed Dating event at BEA.  The Venn diagram was almost a circle....

It is a lovely, spare, and almost plotless novel. Bosc created a meditation not only on why this particular airplane crashed but what incremental mistakes led to the crash and who lost their lives.  He also went beyond the crash itself to look at those lives tangentially connected with the flight and strange intersections of fate. I felt the novel was a little autobiographical, too, but who was commenting: the author or a fictional first-person narrator?  This translation is excellent.

Dear FTC: I received a review copy of this book during an event at Book Expo America.

Blackass by A. Igoni Barrett

Summary from Goodreads:
Furo Wariboko, a young Nigerian, awakes the morning before a job interview to find that he's been transformed into a white man. In this condition he plunges into the bustle of Lagos to make his fortune. With his red hair, green eyes, and pale skin, it seems he's been completely changed. Well, almost. There is the matter of his family, his accent, his name. Oh, and his black ass. Furo must quickly learn to navigate a world made unfamiliar and deal with those who would use him for their own purposes. Taken in by a young woman called Syreeta and pursued by a writer named Igoni, Furo lands his first-ever job, adopts a new name, and soon finds himself evolving in unanticipated ways.

A. Igoni Barrett's Blackass is a fierce comic satire that touches on everything from race to social media while at the same time questioning the values society places on us simply by virtue of the way we look. As he did in Love Is Power, or Something Like That, Barrett brilliantly depicts life in contemporary Nigeria and details the double-dealing and code-switching that are implicit in everyday business. But it's Furo's search for an identity--one deeper than skin--that leads to the final unraveling of his own carefully constructed story.

I was really looking forward to Blackass and, unfortunately, I wanted to like it more than I did.  Primarily, I think the disappointment is due to the likelihood that this book fell at the wrong time for me.  I just wasn't in the mood to read it. I really liked the writing, in particular the idea of using themes from Kafka's Metamorphosis to look at race and culture in contemporary Nigeria, but something just wasn't clicking for me. Perhaps I was expecting more biting satire (it is pitched as a "fierce comic satire" and I wasn't getting a particularly fierce vibe) or I was missing some social cues (although Lagos and the culture of the city didn't feel any more "alien" to me than Teju Cole's or Johwor Ile's Lagos) or if I just didn't have the patience for this right now. Furo just made me feel frustrated, particularly at the end of the book.  Which, now that I think more on it, is actually a feeling that I have when thinking about Gregor Samsa and his less savory predicament.  Hmmm.

I'd like to revisit Blackass in the future, to see if it reads better at a different time. Barrett does have an excellent style so I'll definitely keep an eye out for his next book.

Dear FTC: I received a review copy of this book from Graywolf Press.

Grief is the Thing With Feathers by Max Porter

Summary from Goodreads:

In a London flat, two young boys face the unbearable sadness of their mother's sudden death. Their father, a Ted Hughes scholar and scruffy romantic, imagines a future of well-meaning visitors and emptiness.

In this moment of despair they are visited by Crow - antagonist, trickster, healer, babysitter. This self-described sentimental bird is attracted to the grieving family and threatens to stay until they no longer need him. As weeks turn to months and physical pain of loss gives way to memories, this little unit of three begin to heal.

In this extraordinary debut - part novella, part polyphonic fable, part essay on grief, Max Porter's compassion and bravura style combine to dazzling effect. Full of unexpected humour and profound emotional truth, Grief is the Thing with Feathers marks the arrival of a thrilling new talent.

Grief is the Thing With Feathers basically destroyed me, so I'll try and write something coherent.  Because this book is amazing.

A small family is devastated after the sudden death of their mother/wife.  One evening Crow - the trickster bird of myth - appears on their doorstep and says that he will stay until he is no longer needed.  Until the family has worked through their grief.  So Crow helps put the children to bed and makes their school lunches and fights of evil characters who try to impersonate the dead mother.

This book is beautiful, mind-bending, and heartbreaking.  The narrative is shared out between the father, Crow, and the two boys.  The grief on the page is raw and sharp and just heart-wrenching. I cannot do justice to Porter's writing by writing about it.  So here's a snap of one page:








I did not break until about page 92.

Grief is the Thing With Feathers is out now from Graywolf Press.

Dear FTC: I received a review copy of this book from the publisher.  Bonus Points to the person at Graywolf who sent out the packages because there were crow-sized footprints on the envelope: