The best books that made me gasp as I wrote my book on grief

In glittering prose, this British author writes how she came apart after her father’s sudden heart attack, and how his death broke her. I was struck by the intensity and darkness of her grief, and how she coped with it. Captivated by falconry since childhood, Macdonald grieves by buying a young goshawk, naming her Mabel, and going through the painful training of Mabel. The bird changes, growing into an adult hawk that returns to Helen after flying free. And so did Macdonald change. She wrote that, as time passed, it worked its careful magic: her grief gave way to love, to loving memories of her father. This gave me the idea for my last chapter where I write that, with time, grief can alchemize into joy and happiness can return.

Difficult to categorize into a specific genre, Max Porter’s novel uses a tragi-comic approach to deal with how the grief of a husband and father of two sons is experienced using the metaphor of a crow. “Crow” is an anthropomorphic figure who represents grief in this short book. He talks to the husband, telling him that he will take him through the vestiges of grief until, as Crow finally states, “You don’t need me anymore.” The book ends with Crow bidding the bereaved husband/father goodbye. This book helped my understanding—along with several essays on the sad, dark, and comical aspects of grief.

A searing, short memoir translated from French that captures the life-shattering changes that begin for the author as he hears that his wife may be one of the victims of a terrorist attack at a concert she was attending in Paris. Leiris writes how he wants desperately to stay in the present—hoping that his wife is not one of the victims—but the present swiftly changes to the past as he learns that, despite his hope that it was not so, his wife is one of the victims who was killed. Leiris turns to face life with his toddler son without his beloved wife. 

A book for children and adults translated from Swedish. A poignant story of four children who try to trick death into not taking their ill grandmother. The children think that Death only takes people at night, and that by refilling his coffee, Death will leave in the morning. By the fourth attempt at a refill, Death puts his hand over the cup. The children go upstairs and see that their grandmother has died, and Death, standing by the window says to them, “Cry, heart, but never break.” 

The book inspired some of the material for chapter five that a heart can break metaphorically, and in rare instances, physically. “Broken Heart Syndrome” can happen when extreme distress is experienced by the bereaved after a loved one dies. Also called “Takotsubo Cardiomyopathy,” this is a medical condition that is rare and usually resolves within a matter of weeks without any long-term damage.

This book describes observational evidence in non-human animals showing grief-related behavior after one of their own dies. There are captivating anecdotal stories. One: after Honey Girl, a sea turtle is killed on the Hawaiian island of Oahu, her mate climbs out of the water, up onto the beach to a huge photo memorial to Honey Girl. King describes how he parked himself in front of the photo, staring at it for hours. King asks, was this grief in a reptile? She describes how the behaviors of animals who lose a mate or companion are noticeably distressed. These behaviors and what looks like a complex range of emotions in non-human animals suggest that they also experience grief. Charles Darwin acknowledged that grief is among the emotions that have a universal expression and cuts across species.

King’s book helped with my research for chapter one, “The Evolutionary Origins of Grief.”