I stumbled across this strange, little book by chance on BBC Radio 4’s Book at Bedtime.
A man is writing a book about Ted Hughes. His wife dies in an accident, leaving him to raise their two small boys alone. Four or five days after her death (“the friends and family who had been hanging around being kind had gone home to their own lives”) a giant, talking Crow turns up on the doorstep and moves into their flat.
Yes, that’s right, a giant talking Crow.
Why a Crow? (Why not a Crow?). Confession time: when I read Porter’s book I didn’t know Ted Hughes had written a collection of poetry called “The Life and Songs of the Crow”. It’s a neat link to Dad, the Ted Hughes scholar. I haven’t read any of Hughes’ Crow poems. It didn’t matter; Porter’s book stands by itself.
So what is Crow? Crow is grief (as in the title). Crow is “friend, excuse, deus ex machina, joke, symptom, figment, spectre, crutch, toy, phantom, gag, analyst and babysitter”. Crow is “Ted’s song-legend, Crow of the death-chill…God-eating, trash-licking, word-murdering, carcass-desecrating, math-bomb…and all that”.
But trying to pinpoint exactly what Crow represents kind of misses the point. With a giant, talking Crow in the mix there are obvious parallels with fairy tale or fable, and like any folk-tale worth its salt Grief is the Thing with Feathers has a serious message, a message about coping with loss and living with grief. Crow is a “perfect device” because it allows Porter to explore this undeniably heavy subject while keeping it light. When Dad articulates how much he misses his wife (“The whole city is my missing her”) Crow undercuts it with “Eugh…you sound like a fridge magnet”. You couldn’t have a human character say that – unless they’re completely heartless – but it’s ok for anarchic, anthropomorphic Crow to say it.
And Grief is the Thing with Feathers is no fairy tale. In fact, I’ve never read anything like it. Parts of it read like a regular prose-novel, other parts like free verse, others again like experimental sound poetry (“For a souvenir, for a warning, for a lick of night in the morning. / For a little break in the mourning”). The overall structure is like a three-act play (Part One A Lick of Night; Part Two Defence of the Nest, Part Three Permission to Leave), and the story unfolds in a series of monologues, in effect, by Dad, Crow and the Boys. The Boys speak with one voice (“I’m either brother”) a bit like the Chorus in Classical Tragedy.
My Faber & Faber paperback edition of Grief is the Thing with Feathers is only 114 pages but there is plenty to get your teeth (or beak) into. I’ll give the final word to the Boys. “…if Crow taught / (Dad) anything it was a constant balancing. / For want of a less dirty word: faith. / A howling sorrow which is yes, which is / thank you which is onwards.”
Rating *** Highly recommended.
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