Max Porter

“I lay back, resigned, and wished my wife wasn't dead. I wished I wasn't lying terrified in a giant bird embrace in my hallway.”

“I missed her so much that I wanted to build a hundred-foot memorial to her with my bare hands. I wanted to see her sitting in a vast stone chair in Hyde Park, enjoying her view. Everybody passing could comprehend how much I miss her. How physical my missing is...”

After his wife dies suddenly, a man and his two young sons are plunged into a spiral of pain show more and despair.
The man is working on a biography of the poet, Ted Hughes and at the family's nadir, the father is visited by
Crow, the infamous trickster, that is featured in Hughes work. The bird is here to heal and comfort the grief-stricken.

This is an amazing debut. It is a potent novella, packed with dazzling verse. Despite it's dark themes, it also contains humor and glimmers of hope. One more quote, (I bookmarked a multitude):

“Moving on, as a concept, is for stupid people, because any sensible person knows grief is a long-term project. I refuse to rush. The pain that is thrust upon us let no man slow or speed or fix.” show less

Lanny is a Wordsworthian child. Trailing clouds of glory, the school boy rises above the schoolyard fray: he is oblivious to bullying and petty classroom politics. Intuitive, even mystical, he is, according to his teacher, a joy to teach. Some in the village think of him in a less favourable light: he’s eccentric—freakish. He wanders about singing and spouting weird rhymes and gibberish, and—it is opined—he’s not being properly raised. His parents are negligent: they don’t even show more know where he is a good deal of the time. And imagine actually allowing—encouraging—the boy’s friendship with “Mad Pete”, whom most folk regard with suspicion and disapproval. An acclaimed and controversial artist (known for outrageous sex-themed works), he trails not clouds of glory but shadows of shame and disillusionment. Apparently gay (and maybe worse than that, say some people), Pete retreated from the London art scene to this picturesque village some years ago.

Lanny’s mother, Jolie Lloyd, approaches the ageing artist about giving her son lessons. Not one to provide formal instruction, Pete allows the boy to come sit with him after school every Wednesday. Side by side, the two work at their art, and Lanny is gently guided in his drawing technique. The old man and the young boy also ramble through the village and in the surrounding woods and fields. The place is steeped in history, and sensitive Lanny senses the ghosts that linger and the dark, supernatural forces that surge through the natural world. There’s a myth about Old Papa Toothwort, a Green-Man-type figure, who supposedly still lurks about the place. Parents use his name to keep their misbehaving children in line. Lanny, who’s working on building a bower in the woods (a gift for the village) claims to have seen him.

While Lanny is at school, his mother, a former actress, works on a novel. It’s a thriller, actually—a morally questionable genre she’s a bit ashamed to be writing in. There’s something inherently wrong with people being entertained by violence and murders, she thinks. Lanny’s father, Robert, is a mildly conflicted social climber who works in the financial industry. He drives his flashy car to and from the train station every day. Sometimes the commute gives him time to reflect on his materialistic tendencies and the emptiness of his ambitions, but he can’t quite overcome them. At heart, he is a shallow city slicker. The family’s move to the quaint town within London’s commuter belt is little more than another of Robert’s attempts to impress. Neither of Lanny’s parents is actually comfortable in their quaint, well-appointed cottage. There’s an uneasiness about the place. Both regularly have the eerie sense they’re being watched. In fact, they are . . . There is an active, malevolent force that is steadily gaining energy.

One day Lanny doesn’t come home from school. Not long after, the police move into the village to search for the missing boy. Everybody talks, of course. There’s no shortage of theories about what night have happened to the child, Some enjoy seeing the place become the centre of media attention; they find it exciting see themselves on TV. Others enjoy playing amateur detective. Lanny’s classmates write guilty apology notes to his mother: they’d called him weird, they confess, and they’re so sorry. No end of judgement is passed on the family—particularly on Lanny’s mother—as well as on his older artist mentor. Ultimately (in the third and final section of the novel) all three adults most closely connected with Lanny have a mystical reckoning with the mysterious—natural or supernatural—power that animates the village.

Porter’s mythopoeic novel is an unusual work, one that I did not find all that satisfying. In many ways, the book reminded me of certain works of children’s fantasy in which ancient, dark, and often pagan entities—the old gods—attempt to unleash destruction on the world. A good and innocent child is typically involved. Sometimes the dark forces attempt to overtake or sacrifice the child; often it is the child’s role to resist and battle the darkness. Ultimately, the natural order is restored. That’s more or less the pattern here, as well.

The novel was a quick enough and sometimes engaging read. In the end, however, I felt that the promise of Porter’s work wasn’t realized. The resolution was fuzzy and anticlimactic. I had the sense that Porter was exploring what nature, or the gods, may need from us. For me, he ultimately didn’t deliver.

Rating: 2.5 show less

The house becomes a physical encyclopedia of no-longer hers, which shocks and shocks and is the principal difference between our house and a house where illness has worked away. Ill people, in their last day on Earth, do not leave notes stuck to bottles of red wine saying 'OH NO YOU DON'T COCK-CHEEK'. She was not busy dying, and there is no detritus of care, she was simply busy living, and then she was gone.

A woman dies suddenly, leaving behind her husband and two young sons. As they show more negotiate the days, months and years that follow, they are accompanied by the physical manifestation of their grief, a large and not entirely benign crow.

I was pretty sure I wouldn't enjoy this book and for the first half that remained largely true. My brother died suddenly last year and grief, it turns out, is both unique to each person and utterly, utterly universal. Porter's understanding of grief is so deep as to move past the differences and grab the heart of it.

Some days I realize I've been forgetting basic things, so I run upstairs, or downstairs, or wherever they are and I say, 'You must know that your Mum was the funniest, most excellent person. She was my best friend. She was so sarcastic and affectionate ...' and then I run out of steam because it feels so crass and lazy, and they nod and say, 'We know, Dad, we remember.'

'She would call me sentimental.'

'You are sentimental.'

The offer me space on the sofa next to them and the pain of them being so naturally kind is like appendicitis. I need to double over and hold myself because they are so kind and keep regenerating and recharging their kindness without any input from me.

This is a slight book, told from the alternating viewpoints of the husband, the two sons speaking together, and the crow, who begins as a malevolent and destructive force, then mutates into something approaching, but never quite reaching, comfort. show less

Lanny is a little boy living in an English village outside London. His father, Robert, is an asset manager in the city. His mother, Jolie, was once an actress and now writes edgy psychological thrillers. Lanny is learning about art from Pete, a famous artist who resides in the village who has agreed, at Jolie’s plea, to take on Lanny’s art tutelage. But deeper underground, or in the air, or in everything perhaps, is Dead Papa Toothwort, the elemental spirit of this land that sees all, show more feels all, and becomes all. And he’s taken a special interest in Lanny.

Max Porter’s writing captures the lives in this village in remarkably brief lines, like a charcoal sketch. But the village totally comes to life. He peoples it with the full range of village characters all of whom, of course, Toothwort himself embodies. It is a lively dance as the reader bounces across characters’ thoughts in the Toothwort sections of the novel. But the picture created of Lanny himself is always a bit vague. In part that’s because everyone sees him a bit differently. And in part because he is a bit different. He’s so in tune with his present moment, which in this case is also the ancient mythical Toothwort moment, that he is more naturally a resident of the village than anyone else there, and at the same time somewhat otherworldly. Enchanted would not be too much to say.

I found this novel entirely captivating. And it’s impossible not to be wondering even as you are reading, how did this novel find a publisher? It’s so unusual. Almost like an extended poem. And yet so dramatic (and sometimes traumatic). A wonderful, significant achievement.

Definitely recommended. show less