Publisher's Weekly Review
Porter's first novel is a heartbreaking and life-affirming meditation on the dislocating power of grief. Events are presented from the viewpoint of three characters: a recently widowed dad, his two young boys, and a talking crow who, like Poe's raven, roosts in their house as a tangible symbol of the family's need to come to terms with their loss. The husband has been recently contracted to write a study of Ted Hughes's Crow (written after the death of Sylvia Plath, who is also referenced here), and like the Hughes's trickster Crow, this Crow shifts shape and personality to address the changing needs of the different family members. Porter's characters express their feelings through observations that are profound and simply phrased. The dad recalls the harmonious feeling of lives shared early in his marriage, "when our love was settling into the shape of our lives like cake mixture reaching the corners of the tin as it swells and bakes." The boys, dismayed at how protectively adults coddle them against the reality of their mother's death, wonder, "Where are the fire engines? Where is the noise and clamour of an event like this?" The powerful emotions evoked in this novel will resonate with anyone who has experienced love, loss, and mourning. (June) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Guardian Review
What the critics thought of: Edmund de Waal's The White Road, Chrissie Hynde's Reckless and Max Porter's Grief Is the Thing with Feathers After the huge success of Edmund de Waal 's debut, The Hare with the Amber Eyes, hopes were high for his follow-up, The White Road, which traces the history of porcelain and the author's own formation as a ceramicist. Reviewers were divided on whether the book lived up to expectations. In the New Statesman, Olivia Laing hailed a "beguilingly odd book ... a haunting book, a book that amasses itself piece by piece, gaining in weight."Ekow Eshun in the Independent was also positive, finding it "a mesmerising and finely wrought work. It is also a cautionary tale about the price of beauty pursued at any cost." One got the sense that AS Byatt, writing in the Spectator, was being rather diplomatic, providing a precis and avoiding any value judgments other than to say: "He is amazingly skilled at telling us what is happening as he feels the clay, turns the wheel, unloads the kiln." In the Times, Tristram Hunt damned De Waal with the faintest of praise: "This book is certainly the finest account of the many meanings of porcelain to the modern world that I have read." But James McConnachie, in the Sunday Times, just let rip. "It was clearly torture to write and it is, at points, torture to read ... The problem with The White Road is that it is everything that porcelain is not. It is overthought and overworked, somehow both fragile and heavy." Before publication, the Pretenders frontwoman Chrissie Hynde 's autobiography Reckless provoked a slew of shrill headlines, centred on a passage in which Hynde assumed "full responsibility" for her sexual assault at the hands of a biker gang. Unlike the commentariat, at least critics had to read the book before pronouncing their verdict. "Maybe it's a generational thing, but I'm with Hynde on this one," wrote Kathryn Flett in the Mail on Sunday. "Hynde writes beautifully ... [and] leaves us wanting more." In the Telegraph, Helen Brown was also sympathetic. "While I think it's sad that she feels the need to suck up the blame for their violence, she's only talking sense when she says it's not a good idea for vulnerable individuals 'to fuck around with people, especially people who wear "I Heart Rape" and "On Your Knees" badges'. Brown also complimented Hynde on the "crisp, dry efficiency" of her prose. Jude Rogers, in the Observer, agreed that "she can write", although occasionally "over-ripeness takes hold". and "the pace of the book is erratic ... lagging tediously at times, accelerating wildly at others."India Knight, writing in the Sunday Times, was another admirer, although she did wonder whether Hynde's lack of self-pity put her "perhaps at the shallow end of some benign spectrum ... She observes herself with a sort of arch detachment, which is on occasion highly comical because she's as sharp as a tack and dryly funny." There was high praise from many quarters for Max Porter 's Grief Is the Thing with Feathers, a debut prose/poetry hybrid inspired by Ted Hughes 's crow poems. "Deeply comic and hopelessly sad," wrote Francesca Wade in the Daily Telegraph. "Funny and warm and real, this little book is one to linger on and savour." In the New Statesman, however, Erica Wagner sounded a cautionary note. "It's too tempting simply to turn back to the original [Hughes]", she wrote. "However, it's hard not to admire Porter for his engagement with those black plumes."
Kirkus Review
It's bad enough to lose a spouse, too soon and unexpectedly, and be left to bring children up alone. It's worse, and more complicated still, when a huge crow takes her place. "I lay back, resigned, and wished my wife wasn't dead," says Dad. "I wished I wasn't lying terrified in a giant bird embrace in my hallway." Crow is a metaphor, borrowed from the poems of Ted Hughes, whom debut novelist Porter rightly reveresand indeed, Dad is a Hughes scholar, gently berated by the great man himself for posing a dissertation instead of a question at a reading. But Crow, framed against and obscured by the "blackness of his trauma," is also very real. Porter's novel, related in verse of mixed measure, charts the course of grief, the two sons "brave new boys without a Mum" who, in time, come to resent the meddling, unwanted Crow enough that one or the other of themit doesn't matter which, Porter tells usbecomes a teenager with a murderous hatred of "black birds with nasty beaks." In time Dad comes out of his shattered shell enough to date, taking a Plath scholar to bed: "She was funny and bright and did her best with a fucked-up situation." Was Crow watching? Probably, and creepily, though now, a couple of years into his invasion, his tutelage alternately maddening and to the point, he's ready to leave, saying his goodbye in a lovely poem that's strong enough to stand outside the context of the book, and that closes, "Just be good and listen to birds. / Long live imagined animals, the need, the capacity. / Just be kind and look out for your brother." Porter's daringly strange story skirts disbelief to speak, engagingly and effectively, of the pain this world inflicts, of where the ghosts go, and of how we are left to press on and endure it all. Elegant, imaginative, and perfectly paced. A contribution to the literature of grief and to literature in general. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.