Book Review—Grief is the Thing with Feathers by Max Porter

A widowed Ted Hughes scholar and his two boys try to cope with grief and are visited by Crow, the eponymous figure from Hughes’ Crow: From the Life and Songs of the Crow. Crow tells the father early on that “I will only stay as long as you need me”, and so beings a multi-voiced narrative, moving between Crow’s musings about the family and the pleasure he finds in grief and Dad and the Boys coming to grips with their grief and Crow in their lives.

Grief reads much like a collection of poems within the frame narrative of a widower and his two boys. Much like grief it lacks coherence, moving between frenzied memories, the drudging inactivity of everyday life that slowly becomes the new normal, and the voices one adopts, sometimes little more than an inexplicable kraah, other times fanciful tales that mix memory and desire. Crow acts as therapist , trickster, substitute, scapegoat, and healer. As in Hughes’ work, it celebrates the uncertainties of the figure, taking sombre pleasure in his multitude of roles in different mythologies, all highly personalised in Grief, with Dad and the Boys coming to realize that this unfathomable figure in their lives is grief itself. There are no answers beyond that, because beyond its existence there is nothing certain about grief.

As alluring as it is distressing, Grief is the Thing with Feathers traverses the territory of sorrow without attempting to simplify its intricacies.

Andreas

Film Review—The Babadook by Jennifer Kent

Amelia (Essie Davis), a widow, tries to live with her son Samuel (Noah Wiseman) who has behavioural issues. Hyperactive, he fears monsters, a fear that has real world effects on both mother and son. One night she lets him choose his bedtime story and he selects Mister Babadook. In the pages is a terrifying bogeyman, who warns “the more you deny/ the stronger I get”. Having to deal with the lurking grief of her husband’s death as well as Samuel’s increasingly severe behaviour, Amelia becomes more disturbed by her son’s focus on The Babadook and the real threat it begins to pose.

The film is disconcerting throughout, presenting a world that resembles ours but with the strange proportions of a Grimm’s fairy-tale. This is heightened by the fairy-tale like Mister Babadook, reminiscent of old children’s tales like the Great, Long, Red-legged Scissor Man, that both fascinate and frighten children and adults. The colour palate of the film is true to its story, where we get hints of emotion that slowly build, rather than raucous shifts in mood, or the overused and ineffective quite-quiet-LOUD copout that passes for ‘technique’ in so many horror films. The spectre of the Babadook and Amelia’s grief are fantastically twined within the cold and claustrophobic tinge that stains every shot and conjures the evocative interplay of light and shadow. The result is a subtle story where even the happy ending is marred.

Understated and unsettling, The Babadook is not just horror cinema at its finest, but a strangely beautiful look at grief.
Andreas

Book Review - The Testament of Mary by Colm Tóibín

Told from the point of view of Mary, mother of Jesus of Nazareth, the work takes place years after the crucifixion. She lives in hiding, with the only people aware of her identity and location being two of her son’s followers, whom she deems “misfits”. She recounts her perspective of her son’s life and death, while she fends off her “captors”, who are in the process of writing the Gospels.

There is a hint of Life of Brian (1979), as for Mary her son is not the messiah, he’s just a… well, you all know the line. He is one of many rabblerousers discontent with the current order, expressing ideas and thoughts as yet unimagined.

The language is unrelentingly modern and pessimistic. In fact, many reviewers have taken issue with the work’s depiction of Mary as a harsh, cynical, and cowardly old woman who condemns the change she witnesses in her son and runs before the moment of his death in order to save herself from a similar fate. But the actual text is far more sympathetic, more disparaging. True, this is not the sanctified Mary of the church, but nor is she a vile old crone. Her pessimism is not from hate, but sorrow.

A dirge of a lost life and a world destroying itself, the Testament of Mary is as enthralling as it is plaintive. 

Andreas.

Book Review - The Knitting Circle by Ann Hood

Love and loss changes a person and the way your life unfolds cannot always be predicted. Mary Baxter is dealing with a great grief. Though reluctant, she joins a knitting circle and finds that this helps her move on through the stages of her healing journey. The book has a simple premise, that people dealing with grief and loss can find a way forward through starting a simple physical process of learning to knit. The process engages the hands and distracts the brain so they can do it at a level they can manage. The more complicated stitches and patterns can be introduced gradually to match their developing functional capability. The act of creating even a simple scarf, out of a repetitive and almost meditative process is quite therapeutic. It also connects them with other people on a very unthreatening level and helps to break down the isolation of their grieving. Even getting help to unravel a tangle or rescue a dropped stitch is practice interacting with and receiving help from other people. As they start to develop knitting skills, they, in turn can 'pay it forward' and help start others on their journey. As Mary gets to know each of the other knitters, and their stories, she finds how to love and live again. This is a quiet novel of loss and grief and it made me cry. It's also a novel of healing, sharing, friendship and love. I'm glad I read it and I'm glad I have found friends who taught me how to knit. Wendy