Grief is the Thing with Feathers

Crow tries to tell Dad the story of how Mum died, but Dad decides he does not want to hear the story. Dad is conflicted between the desire to never marry again and the desire to find a new relationship. Eventually, two years after Mum died, he has his first sexual encounter with someone new, a Sylvia Plath scholar.

As the boys grow older, they slowly come to terms with Mum’s death. They never read Dad’s book and confess to finding Ted Hughes pretentious. Dad struggles when he is asked to move on from Mum, insisting that moving on is a lifelong process. Crow informs Dad that his work was done when the first draft of the book was submitted. Dad knows that it is time to ask Crow to leave.

The boys summarize Dad’s life: “He spent the first twenty years of his life reading books, being not-bad-but-not-skilled at football and waiting for Mum” (105), and then spent the rest of his life recovering from Mum’s death. Eventually, his book about Ted Hughes is released to moderate acclaim. In a meeting with his publisher,