Review of 'Grief is the Thing With Feathers'

This is a beautiful, clever book about bereavement. I loved Max Porter's second book but it's amazing to think that this is his first - it's brilliant. A plot summary doesn't do it justice - a man grieving for his recently dead wife is consoled by a crow that comes to live with him as he struggles to parent his two boys; like I said, this doesn't do it justice. There's a backstory about Ted Hughes and the way in which Eng. Lit. people have divided into pro-Ted and pro-Sylvia Plath people - I don't really get all of that, though it's well depicted. But this was very good - just read it. It's very little as well, it won't take more than an hour, but it'll be an hour that you won't regret.