But rather than capturing these emotions through stark realism, he took a decision that helped liberate the scenario’s creative potential. Such subject matter was close to Porter’s own childhood experience of parental loss. The father shuffles around “waiting for the shock to give way, waiting for any kind of structured feeling to emerge from the organisational fakery of my days.” The boys register their loss and the effect on their father: “We guessed and understood that this was a new life and Dad was a different type of Dad now and we were different boys, we were brave new boys without a Mum.” As each come to terms with the loss of mother and wife, the result is humane and wrenching. A household is shaken to its foundations by the sudden and unexpected bereavement, whose cause is left deliberately unclear, and Porter transitions between the voice of the father and a unison chorus of the two boys, dipping in and out of each character’s distinct style of mourning. The set-up was that of a potentially straightforward misery-memoir. The result was hailed as a fantastical mixture of dark comedy and poignant beauty, capturing the contours of mourning, the domestic tenderness of single fatherhood and way that literature helps us cope with life.

In a work that Porter has called “a multi-voice fable … a short book which moves between prose, poetry, play script, fairytale and essay” a bereaved Ted Hughes scholar deals with the death of his young wife while raising two small children. This extraordinary debut, full of unexpected humour and emotional truth, marks the arrival of a thrilling and significant new talent.Max Porter’s 2015 striking first book Grief is the Thing With Feathers was one of the eeriest, most exuberant and rapturously received fictional debuts in recent British writing. This sentimental bird is drawn to the grieving family and threatens to stay until they no longer need him. In this moment of despair they are visited by Crow - antagonist, trickster, healer, babysitter. Their father, a Ted Hughes scholar and scruffy romantic, imagines a future of well-meaning visitors and emptiness. 'Amazing and unforgettable.' THE TIMES 'Dazzlyingly good.' ROBERT MACFARLANE 'Unlike anything I've read before.' GUARDIAN In a London flat, two young boys face the unbearable sadness of their mother's sudden death.

** Order Shy, the Sunday Times number one bestseller from Max Porter, now ** A SUNDAY TIMES TOP 100 NOVEL OF THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY Winner of the 2016 International Dylan Thomas Prize and the Sunday Times/Peter, Fraser + Dunlop Young Writer of the Year award and shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award and the Goldsmiths Prize.

Grief is the thing with feathers pages