RaveThe Times (UK)The narrative interrupts itself, brings us up short, as Adichie is brought up short by the realisation that he is gone. This realisation sneaks up on her in sometimes unexpected ways, through the innocent questions of her four-year-old daughter, or through the fact of a death being sent out into the world by text, or in print, and made real ... Notes on Grief continues, in 30 short, lucid chapters, for 90 pages. It will not delay you long, but what it leaves will stay with you, like figures caught in a strobe light, lined up so closely that you can jump from one to another with a jolt that captures the jerkiness of the hours and days and weeks that follow the detonation ... Most of all I liked having a companion, rather than a guide, who didn’t try to advise me how to grieve properly but told me what it is like.
