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miss_elease's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
sad
slow-paced
5.0
teared up several times. adiche captures the unmooring of grief while simultaneously inviting us to witness the love she has for her father and the love her father has for his children.
Grief has, as one of its many egregious components, the onset of doubt. No, I am not imagining it. Yes, my father truly was lovely.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death of parent, Death, and Grief
Minor: Kidnapping and War
lauren16297's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
sad
fast-paced
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Grief
Moderate: Death of parent
Minor: War and Death
grandmerin's review against another edition
emotional
inspiring
sad
medium-paced
3.5
took a while to connect with the story because i didn’t know her dad, feels like a published journal entry. there are some good lines but nothing spectacular either
Content Warnings
Graphic: Grief and Death of parent
Moderate: Kidnapping, War, and Death of parent
jordan_noel's review against another edition
emotional
hopeful
sad
slow-paced
4.25
I read this book after I lost my mom, hoping to find some solidarity and comfort.
Reading it, I often felt myself distancing from Adichie’s explanation of grief. I often had very different experiences in dealing with my mother’s death and found we had very differing views of grieving and being able to continue with life.
Still, Adichie’s honest, hopeful reflections were a great comfort in grief and isolation nonetheless.
Reading it, I often felt myself distancing from Adichie’s explanation of grief. I often had very different experiences in dealing with my mother’s death and found we had very differing views of grieving and being able to continue with life.
Still, Adichie’s honest, hopeful reflections were a great comfort in grief and isolation nonetheless.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death of parent
Minor: War
tatjanasbooks's review against another edition
emotional
hopeful
reflective
relaxing
sad
fast-paced
4.75
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death of parent, Death, and Grief
Minor: War
maxthefish's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
sad
fast-paced
4.75
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death of parent, Death, and Grief
Moderate: Kidnapping, Medical content, and War
guinness74's review against another edition
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
sad
fast-paced
5.0
Adichie is a strong, brilliant voice in the pantheon of writers that I enjoy. I have not read all of her works, but those I have speak to me. And, though I have been mostly untouched by the grief that she evinces in this short book, I am aware of the fleeting nature of human life and the realization that my own parents are coming into the sunset of their lives, so this book seems to have more to tell me in its wisdom.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Grief, Death, and Death of parent
Minor: War, Pandemic/Epidemic, and Kidnapping
deenmachine's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
5.0
Love a short grief book. Often that's all I really need or can handle. This one doesn't capture it all but it isn't meant to. A loving and bittersweet reflection on her father and what it is to lose someone you really, really care about
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Grief, and Death of parent
Moderate: Kidnapping
Minor: War
nebraskanwriter's review against another edition
emotional
inspiring
sad
fast-paced
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death of parent, Grief, Kidnapping, Death, Medical content, Panic attacks/disorders, Terminal illness, and War
adhdru's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
sad
5.0
"To have love snatched from you, especially unexpectedly, and then to be told to turn to memories. Rather than succor, my memories bring eloquent stabs of pain that say, "This is what you will never have again".
It feels strange to rate a book that is so much about emotion, pain, longing —grief. A book that is so personal, and yet so universal in this times of global pandemic.
There is so much I could relate to even though I'm on the other side of the world from where she writes, although my family is in a different continent from hers, despite losing a different parental figure. Reading this book reminded me of a quote from "The Deep", by Rivers Solomon: “What is belonging?” we ask. She says, “Where loneliness ends.” —in a way, reading Notes on Grief reminded me that I belong to grief and it belongs to me, and to the many others who have had the joy to love and the agony to mourn.
It feels strange to rate a book that is so much about emotion, pain, longing —grief. A book that is so personal, and yet so universal in this times of global pandemic.
There is so much I could relate to even though I'm on the other side of the world from where she writes, although my family is in a different continent from hers, despite losing a different parental figure. Reading this book reminded me of a quote from "The Deep", by Rivers Solomon: “What is belonging?” we ask. She says, “Where loneliness ends.” —in a way, reading Notes on Grief reminded me that I belong to grief and it belongs to me, and to the many others who have had the joy to love and the agony to mourn.
Quotes that felt like my soul was ripped out of my body, exposed and then retold to me by someone infinitely more eloquent than me:
"[...] utterly unraveling, screaming and pounding the floor. The news is like a vicious uprooting. I am yanked away from the world I have known since childhood. And I am resistant"
"Our Zoom call is beyond surreal, all of us weeping and weeping and weeping, in different parts of the world"
"[...] laughter is a part of grief. Laughter is tightly braided into our family argot, and now we laugh remembering [...], but somewhere in the background there is a haze of disbelief. The laughter trails off. The laughter becomes tears and becomes sadness and becomes rage."
"It was so fast, too fast. It was not supposed to happen like this, not like a malicious surprise, not during a pandemic that has shut down the world."
"Often, too, there is the urge to run and run, to hide. But I cannot alwys run, and each time I am forced to squarely confront my grief [...] I feel a shimmering panic."
"I back away from condolences. People are kind, people mean well, but knowing this does not make their words rankle less."
"'Never' has come to stay. 'Never' feels so unfairly punitive. For the rest of my life, I will live with my hands outstreched for things that are no longer there."
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death of parent and Death
Moderate: Kidnapping
Minor: War
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