Dear readers, I’m a literary omnivore — I’ll read just about anything. But certain themes and subjects are still guaranteed to grab my attention, and grief is one of them. I love a grief book! I hope that doesn’t sound grim. It’s not that I’m constantly wallowing in despair, truly. Rather, I love grief books because, and nobody tells you this, grief is weird. It’s mental, it’s emotional, it’s physiological; you feel it in your gut, in your chest, in your skin. It is an experience like no other. That’s the trick with writing about grief: How do you make something so idiosyncratic, so primal, legible on the page? It’s a literary challenge, and all writers approach it in their own way. That’s why I love grief books — the puzzle of writing about loss has produced some of the most creative, cathartic and enduring works I’ve ever read. Here are two that I particularly admire. —MJ “Grief Is the Thing With Feathers,” by Max PorterFiction, 2016
You know that Simon & Garfunkel lyric “Hello darkness, my old friend”? That is the ethos behind Porter’s debut novel, “Grief Is the Thing With Feathers”: Hello grief, my old friend. The book, whose title riffs on an Emily Dickinson poem, uses three points of view to explore a family whose mother has died: “Dad,” who is in deep mourning; “Boys,” the combined perspective of the two young sons who don’t quite understand what has happened but sense something amiss; and — thrillingly — “Crow,” who is grief incarnate, come to live with the family. “Just say hello,” Crow demands upon arriving like a force in the night, four or five days after the mother’s death, bursting through the door to scoop Dad up in its enormous wings. “Say it properly.” Crow is Porter’s great creation, the thing that makes this slender novel transcendent. If the book were simply a beautifully told account of a family’s recovery, that would be worthy on its own. But with Crow on hand, the proceedings become bizarre and riveting. Crow is simultaneously protective, menacing and unpredictable — in one moment entertaining the idea of gouging out Dad’s eyeball “for fun or mercy,” and in another furiously defending the home from a demon who feeds on grief, issuing boastful warnings afterward that this house is under its care. It’s a refreshing twist. Grief is often depicted as a somber and solemn thing, but ask anybody who has experienced it and they’ll tell you: Grief is an unruly bitch. Porter’s book understands that. Crow comes unbidden, it comforts, it lurks, it mocks, it defends, it challenges, it helps us heal and then it leaves. And isn’t that just how grief goes? Read if you like: “Poor Deer,” by Claire Oshetsky; Miyazaki films. “Things in Nature Merely Grow,” by Yiyun LiNonfiction, 2025
One extraordinary thing about grief books is how consistently beautiful their language is. Maybe it’s because they’re so often elegies, or maybe grief is just so complex that you need a special type of music to capture it — whatever the reason, grief writing, I have found, frequently reads almost like poetry: personal, lyrical, arresting. In this memoir Li takes the opposite approach. Gone are the linguistic flourishes and ornate symbolism; instead Li offers a blunt and exacting look at her sorrow following the suicide of her son James, six years after his older brother, Vincent, also died by suicide. How do you reckon with such loss? For Li, the answer is to focus on the facts. “Facts are the harshest and the hardest part of life, and yet facts, unalterable, bring with them some order and logic,” Li writes. “There is no good way to state these facts, which must be acknowledged before I go on with this book. My husband and I had two children and lost them both.” A grief memoir that focuses on facts over emotion? If that sounds detached and dispassionate, I promise you this memoir is anything but. By looking directly and unflinchingly at what is painful, Li cuts to the core. “I’ve decided to write this book,” she states, “starting with a single established fact: I am in an abyss.” Oof! And: “No matter how long we get to parent our children, there are only limited numbers of ‘I love yous’ we can say to them.” OOF! “Things in Nature Merely Grow” feels like a seminar in grief, and I say that in the most positive way. We tend to feel our way through grief. The power of this book is that it gives us a way to think through it, to understand it differently, to consider it anew. Read if you like: “The Year of Magical Thinking,” by Joan Didion; “Now We Are Five,” by David Sedaris. We hope you’ve enjoyed this newsletter, which is made possible through subscriber support. Subscribe to The New York Times. Friendly reminder: Check your local library for books! Many libraries allow you to reserve copies online. Like this email? Sign-up here or forward it to your friends. Have a suggestion or two on how we can improve it? Let us know at books@nytimes.com. Plunge further into books at The New York Times or our reading recommendations.
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