The ‘unpublishable’ book that conquered the world
When English author Max Porter wrote his 2015 debut novel, Grief is the Thing with Feathers, he never imagined it would end up on bookshelves, let alone on world stages.
At the time, he had a lot on his plate as a father of young children, plus a demanding day job as an editor (he’s worked on such highbrow titles as Eleanor Catton’s Booker Prize winner The Luminaries and Nobel Prize recipient Han Kang’s The Vegetarian). With little time for his own creativity, the self-described “compulsive maker of things” began fiddling with what he had dubbed his “crow book” in the evening or on public transport.
“I had this preoccupation for a long time in how to tell the story of these two children who lose a parent, which is based in my own life,” says Porter, whose father died when he was six. “I was sort of walloping through joyful life and wondering why at age 30 I was still wanting to sit down on a Sunday night and weep for my dad.”
“Compulsive maker of things”: Novelist Max Porter.
The resulting novella became a literary sensation. Its blend of prose, poetry and fable addressed grief not in a didactic manner, but instead with a “squalid, flapping, unpredictable, scatological madness” as Porter puts it. The work switches between the perspectives of a widowed Ted Hughes scholar, his two boys and the avian visitor Crow, who arrives after the death of their wife and mother and “won’t leave until you don’t need me any more”.
When Porter first showed it to people, it was deemed almost unpublishable as it was so unlike anything else in the literary landscape. “I never thought of it as a thing that would sit in bookshops,” Porter says. “Even when it came out, people were like, where does it go? In poetry? In fiction? In memoir? And I was always quite pleased with that, let it hop around.”
The book became not only an international bestseller, but also a critical success, winning the Dylan Thomas Prize and The Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award.
It also set off a flurry of adaptations in its wake, including a 2018 play adapted by Enda Walsh starring Cillian Murphy and a big-screen version with Benedict Cumberbatch that premiered at Sundance Film Festival this year.
When asked about any other reimaginings, Porter reels off a dizzying array of versions he’s aware of, a Birmingham dance adaptation, an Argentinian theatre show, a puppet adaptation in Estonia and a person in Stockholm who wants to do an opera of it.
The latest of those adaptations is set to hit the Belvoir stage this month with a powerhouse team behind it. Director Simon Phillips, lighting designer Nick Schlieper and actor Toby Schmitz have collaborated on the adaptation, but that almost didn’t come to be. The creative team had been considering simply staging Enda Walsh’s version, and it was a conversation with Porter that set the Aussie team on a different track.
“We were getting in touch with Max to see where he sat on that issue,” Phillips says. “And he was quick to discuss that actually Enda’s adaptation was not the only adaptation. He said, look, other people have adapted it in different ways and why don’t you have a bash?”
Have a bash they did, and while it might seem a near impossible feat to turn Porter’s deeply literary, often abstract novella into a coherent play, Porter had a straightforward solution to that conundrum.
“I’m like, just take the book and get in a room and then start reading it and keep what you want and bin what you don’t need. Then I think you’ll find you’ve got a play on your hands,” says Porter. “I think you have to give people permission to make it their own because otherwise it will just be trying to replicate a thing that already exists.”
Philip Lynch, Toby Schmitz and Fraser Morrison in Belvoir’s Grief is the Thing with Feathers.
Phillips saw it as a blessing that Porter gave them such sweeping approval to adapt the book freely, allowing them to cut and rearrange sections for their theatrical production.
Phillips and Schmitz are especially excited about cellist Freya Schack-Arnott performing live, bringing a powerful emotiveness to the production. “There’s something about that particular instrument that speaks straight to the heart,” Schmitz says. “It’s such a human sound. It can speak about grief, about joy, in a tone that can sound like a sigh, a moan, a peal of laughter.”
Schmitz plays opposite Philip Lynch and Fraser Morrison as the two boys, while he performs both the character of the grieving father and the by turns fierce, mischievous and nurturing Crow. As Porter puts it, “Crow is an attempt to rewild the rituals of mourning, to get it out of the Church of England’s grim residues.”
“Sometimes it’s just a bit more of a job, acting. This is one of those rare diamonds.”
Actor Toby Schmitz
Phillips believes Schmitz is perfectly cast for the dual role, needing someone who can instantly pivot between cerebral refinement and visceral savagery. “The father operates in essentially an intellectual world, albeit struggling with intense grief. The crow is like a savage caregiver; he brings to the piece a danger and an unpredictability of mood. And those are right slap-bang in Toby’s wheelhouse.”
For Schmitz, it’s a feast of a role that has him rushing to rehearsal each morning with a beam on his face. “It’s rare to have such a thrilling thing to work on,” Schmitz says. “Sometimes it’s just a bit more of a job, acting. This is one of those rare diamonds.”
While Phillips muses that putting on something with the word grief in the title may strike fear into the hearts of theatre programmers who think attendees are only after a jolly night out, he believes audience members will appreciate both Porter’s take on grieving and the life-affirming qualities of the work.
“Of course, [grief] is what it’s about, but the way that it spins that subject matter around is so refreshing,” Phillips says. “I always find I’m hard pushed to get to the end of it without feeling emotional in a euphoric way because there’s light at the end of the tunnel, but still you never lose the sense of what these guys have lost.”
So, on the 10th anniversary of its publication, why does Porter think the unclassifiable Grief is the Thing with Feathers continues to resonate so profoundly worldwide?
“There’s something about the book that is like permission to feel mad and be hurting and go squawking and flapping your wings. In a world where we’re not really encouraged to stand on the hilltop and scream our true feelings, maybe that’s why it means something to people. Just the big, open-hearted yelp of it.”
Grief is the Thing with Feathers is at Belvoir St Theatre from July 26 to August 24.
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