My Review:
All of us deal with grief in different ways and in this short book Max Porter presents us with grief in the form of a crow. It is not a mystery why the crow is the perfect symbol of grief. Crows are oftentimes associated with bad luck or evil omens, which is appropriate this book in which the Mum dies from a strange accident. Crows are also birds of carrion which swoop down and eat the remains of decaying animals. But crows are also know for their intelligence and resilience, so what better animal to use than this bird to personify grief.
When the book begins the character who is simply called “Dad,” is wandering around in his flat only five days after his wife has died. At this point all of the mourners have departed and the children are asleep and the doorbell rings. When he answers, Dad is accosted by feathers and describes his strange experience, “There was a rich smell of decay, and moss, and leather, and yeast.” A crow appears and tells Dad, “I won’t leave until you need me anymore.”
The rest of this short book alternates between Dad, Crow and the Children narrating the story. The Crow is there to easy the grief for Dad and the children. But he also gives advice, babysits and entertains. When Crow speaks the story takes on a poetic tone. When he enters the home he notices that “The whole place was heaving mourning, every surface dead Mum, every crayon, tractor, coat, welly, covered in a film of grief.” Crow notices that there is not an inch of the home that is unaffected by the Mum’s sudden death.
I love that the author includes the point-of-view of the children since grief affects them very differently than adults. The children, who are two small boys, and whom the author simply calls “Boys,” say that they first can’t get a straight answer about where Mum is. It is natural that adults want to protect children from misfortune but Dad can only keep the truth from the Boys for so long. Children oftentimes understand serious things more than we give them credit. They say about the Mum’s death: “We guessed and understood that this was a new life and Dad was a different type of Dad now and we were different boys, brave new boys without a mum.” Throughout the book the boys are not only brave, but astute at analyzing their feelings as well as their Dad’s.
There are some truly exceptional, short passages that beautifully capture the grief of Dad who loved his wife dearly and was very close to her. For example, the Dad gets very upset when he starts to forget everyday, mundane things about his wife. So to assuage his grief he tells the boys what a wonderful Mum they had. The Boys grieve for the Mum in their own unique ways. One of my favorite passages written from the point-of-view of the boys is when they describe how they used to be scolded for spattering the mirror with toothpaste, leaving the toilet seat up and for not shutting drawers. The Boys now do these things because they miss their Mum and doing these same things now reminds them of her.
This short, powerful book poetically describes the gaping hole that the absence of a loved one leaves in our life. We are all affected by grief in different ways, we all have that crow that hangs around us as a reminder of what we have lost. But in the end everything does get a little better and a little easier and the crow eventually flies away.
About the Author:
This novel opens in 1945 on the day in which the end of World War II has just been announced in the small village of Priory Dean. Everyone is celebrating and dancing in the streets but Martha Trevor and Edith Wilson still show up to their post duty at the Red Cross. During the course of their conversation we learn that they are from very different social classes; Martha is part of the upper-class gentry that live on the Hill in town and Edith is part of the working class families that live on the other end of town. At one point Edith worked as Martha’s housekeeper before Martha’s family hit some financially hard times.
The Ashby family has maintained their estate in the south of England for many generations. The current family members who inhabit the estate are best known for their stables of beautiful horses. Aunt Bee, the matriarch of the family, oversees the care of her ten-year-old nieces Jane and Ruth. Bee supervises and runs the horse estate with the help of her niece Elenor and nephew Simon who are young adults. Although to visit them for afternoon tea, one would believe that this is a happy and well-adjusted family, the Ashby’s have suffered some terrible tragedies.
I absolutely feel in love with the quirky, charming and free-spirited character of Cluny Brown. We first meet her through the eyes of her Uncle Arn, who is distressed because he feels that Cluny doesn’t seem to know her proper place in life. He tells a stranger that he meets in the park that his twenty year-old niece had the nerve to treat herself to tea at the Ritz. Uncle Arn is simply beside himself that Cluny doesn’t understand that she is a plumber’s niece and has no business having tea at the Ritz.
I was not surprised to find out the author composed this novel in a tent on the front lines of World War I. The novel is a gruesome, starkly honest portrayal of the horrors of war. The author, however, draws the readers in at first with a light and satirical description of its gentle, naïve and optimistic main characters, William and Griselda.
The Book Binder's Daughter 