Review of Notes on Grief by Chimamanda Adichie.
I have to start by stating the obvious: Notes on Grief is a wonderful book; an easy 10/10 for me. Yes, I know what you’re probably thinking. This is a book written by one of my favourite authors, so maybe I’m biased. But, hear me out first.
Notes on Grief is a book about remembrance. It details Chimamanda’s journey as she processes the loss of her father, who, you will gather from the book, was her hero. In the book, she is able to put to paper what most have endured but are unable to articulate so beautifully. She takes us with her as she goes through the stages of grief.
The book starts with her receiving the news of the death of her father and how that single news upended her world. She follows it with her description of how ungentle and unsparing grief can be.
She writes:
"Grief is a cruel kind of education. You learn how ungentle mourning can be, how full of anger. You learn how glib condolences can feel. You learn how much grief is about language, the failure of language and the grasping for language".
She goes through denial, refusing to share the news with non-family members or fully acknowledge the death of her father in some other way, and is comforted by the refuge this denial provides her. She also asks, in disbelief, how the world has remained unchanged and is so unaware of her grief.
"I am filled with disbelieving astonishment that the mailman comes as usual and people are inviting me to speak somewhere and regular news alerts appear on my phone screen. How is it that the world keeps going, breathing in and out unchanged, while in my soul there is a permanent scattering?"
She acknowledges the anger that comes with grief and writes to warn off her enemies.
"Enemies, beware: the worst has happened. My father is gone. My madness will now bare itself".
She reflects on the fragility of mortality, how all we have is the moment and how important it is to seize the moment and simply live. She writes beautifully about her father whom she remembers as a simple, kind, funny man with a strong sense of duty. He was her biggest fan, her hero and a gracious person whose pride in her mattered.
She ends the book with an acceptance of her loss and an acknowledgement of how life altering grieving has been.
"It does not matter whether I want to be changed, because I am changed. A new voice is pushing itself out of my writing, full of the closeness I feel to death, the awareness of my own mortality, so finely threaded, so acute. A new urgency. An impermanence in the air".
Notes on Grief is an honest, poignant and deeply moving book on what it feels like to deal with the loss of a loved one. The words are elegantly strung to paint a vivid picture, and you cannot only imagine but are able to relate and feel the words as though you’ve lived it (well, haven’t we all? :( ).
