Watch Author Max Porter Read From His Novel, Grief Is The Thing With Feathers 

In a Service95 Book Club exclusive, author Max Porter and his son, read an extract from his novel, Grief Is The Thing With Feathers – Dua’s Monthly Read for April. The story explores loss, grief and healing, following a recently widowed father and his two young sons as they struggle to cope with the sudden death of their wife and mother. Soon after, they are visited by Crow – a mischievous, chaotic, and enigmatic figure – who acts as both a caregiver and a disruptor, guiding the family through their grief.

Told from multiple perspectives – Dad, the Boys and Crow – the novel captures the raw and fragmented nature of grief. This excerpt, chosen by Max, is “when the boys remember a scene from their childhood,” he says. “The point of the book is that the boys play at being one another: they are two people but one character – they’re ‘Boys’. That, for me, was trying to get at the sibling relationship, but also find a way of reckoning with and writing about the way that I am always going to be that six-year-old boy, understanding both my relationship with my brother and also the loss of a parent.”

Watch the full reading in the video here