Latest news with #GriefistheThingwithFeathers
Sydney Morning Herald
18-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
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.' 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.' Loading 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 Age
18-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Age
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.' 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.' Loading 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.
Yahoo
05-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Dua Lipa Turns Heads With Stunning Red Outfit
Dua Lipa is continuing to trend on social media for her stunning outfits on tour. The 29-year-old pop star is currently in the middle of her Radical Optimism tour. The tour started in Singapore in November of 2024 and it's scheduled to wrap up in Mexico City in December of 2025. Dua Lipa and her crew are currently in Auckland, New Zealand. Dua Lipa turned heads with her sizzling red outfit, shared to Instagram following her latest tour stop on Wednesday evening. "Auckland Night 1 💋," she wrote. Dua Lipa has opened up about how she winds down on tour, too. She enjoys a good book. The pop star has been reading "Grief is the Thing with Feathers," a novel by Max Porter. "It's the story of a young family devastated by grief when the boys' mother suddenly dies. As the weight of their grief threatens to sink them, a human-size crow arrives on their doorstep and moves in, announcing that he will stay until they no longer need him. Yes, you read that right – a giant talking crow. Is Crow here to help, or purely to cause chaos? Is he even real or a figment of their imagination? That's the question that carries through the book but, by the end, it barely matters, as his purpose becomes clearer," she wrote. "It might take you a second to get into the voice of Crow but once you are, you are in for a treat. Grief Is The Thing With Feathers is definitely a book where you really just have to surrender to the story – take it from me, let yourself go and enjoy the wild ride." Dua Lipa goes through a lot while performing on stage, so it's cool to see that she chooses to wind down by looking through a good book.
Telegraph
19-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
The Thing with Feathers: Benedict Cumberbatch's surreal horror is a squawking misfire
Some books cast a spell, which must be what attracted Benedict Cumberbatch to star in The Thing with Feathers. But that doesn't mean they're destined to make great films, however honest everyone's aims, and diligent their acting. Writer-director Dylan Southern turns a very literary tour de force into cinema that clomps, languishes and squawks 'METAPHOR!' with almost no plot to motor it along. On the page, the conceit of Max Porter's 2015 debut novella Grief is the Thing with Feathers – that of a giant crow presiding over a widower's bereavement – was certainly a flex, showing promising gumption. Lo and behold, Porter's next novel Lanny (2019) was altogether wondrous. The former book has already been adapted for the stage, in a well-liked 2018 version by Enda Walsh, starring Cillian Murphy. Southern wants to meet Porter's achievement anew, but it's an almighty hurdle to set himself as a first-time feature director. The supposed climax becomes a hellscape in all the wrong ways, as well as an unwieldy genre hybrid, about one-third of the way (but no more) to Babadook-esque horror. As a straight grief drama, which is how things start, The Thing with Feathers does make some gritty inroads – which is kind of impressive, given how weirdly unspecific it all is. Cumberbatch is a grieving father, unnamed except as 'Dad' by his two young sons (Henry and Richard Boxall). His late wife has collapsed in a freak accident at home and died; he found the body. While concealing his full devastation to preserve a sense of normality, he can't handle the small things: putting milk in the fridge, not burning the toast, stopping these tykes trundling all over him. He's an illustrator, which cues up his black feathered nemesis, Crow, to make a looming leap off the page. After the Netflix drama Eric, which paired Cumberbatch with an imaginary blue puppet monster that helped his character cope with losing his son, we perhaps need to call time now on him sharing the screen with lumbering personifications of emotion. This man-sized corvine figment rasps in the voice of David Thewlis – who else? – and taunts him as a 'Sad Dad' hitting the bottle. Alas, the relationship being sold between Crow and Dad's grief is so hammeringly obvious it gives the film nowhere to go but down. Southern directs the young brothers well – there's a degree of spite to their rough-housing that's believable. And Cumberbatch, who has never phoned in any performance I've seen, is doing everything he can to keep the film in touch with reality. But the problems are insurmountable. The material is just so ill-suited to this unpoetic quasi-horror approach. The lighting in the house turns sickly; the iffily designed creature starts flapping around in a frenzy; the viewer feels nothing. There's no way Southern can lift us out of this pit of despond, which is what Porter's flair for literary invention did. It's a grim situation – like watching a film peck at its own entrails.
Reuters
18-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Reuters
Benedict Cumberbatch unexpectedly sideswiped by grief in 'Thing With Feathers' drama
BERLIN, Feb 18 (Reuters) - Benedict Cumberbatch was overtaken by grief at unexpected moments while playing a widower in his new family drama "The Thing With Feathers," the British actor said on Tuesday in Berlin. "Odd moments would just sideswipe me," Cumberbatch told journalists about the film, playing in the Berlin Film Festival's non-competitive Special section. He recalled how one scene of his character folding his dead wife's clothes and putting them in a box caught him off guard. "I'm 48. I've been through a bit. I've lived. I've experienced grief," he said. "It just really struck a chord." Cumberbatch stars as the father of two young sons whose wife has unexpectedly died, and he begins to receive visits from a large, otherworldly crow figure that eventually forces the family to confront their grief. Part of the role involved letting go and not trying to control what grief should look like, said Cumberbatch, who made a name for himself by playing Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Strange. "It sounds perverse when talking about grief, but as far as the artistry of making something feel or look or be real in that moment for a character, you just leave it alone and it happens," he said. The film, which was adapted from the book "Grief is the Thing with Feathers" by Max Porter, is British filmmaker Dylan Southern's debut fiction feature. "I had never read anything like it, it's so dense with kind of profound ideas and character detail, but it's packed into a tiny little novella," Southern told Reuters about the book. The director of documentaries such as "No Distance Left to Run," about the band Blur, said he wanted to capture the experience of grieving with the family that the book conveys. "It was kind of a challenging but really rewarding kind of project to dive into," he said.
