Notes on Grief is an exquisite work of meditation, remembrance, and hope, written in the wake of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's beloved father’s death in the summer of 2020. As the COVID-19 pandemic raged around the world, and kept Adichie and her family members separated from one another, her father succumbed unexpectedly to complications of kidney failure.

Expanding on her original New Yorker piece, Adichie shares how this loss shook her to her core. She writes about being one of the millions of people grieving this year; about the familial and cultural dimensions of grief and also about the loneliness and anger that are unavoidable in it. With signature precision of language, and glittering, devastating detail on the page--and never without touches of rich, honest humor--Adichie weaves together her own experience of her father’s death with threads of his life story, from his remarkable survival during the Biafran war, through a long career as a statistics professor, into the days of the pandemic in which he’d stay connected with his children and grandchildren over video chat from the family home in Abba, Nigeria. In the compact format of We Should All Be Feminists and Dear Ijeawele, Adichie delivers a gem of a book--a book that fundamentally connects us to one another as it probes one of the most universal human experiences. Notes on Grief is a book for this moment—a work readers will treasure and share now more than ever--and yet will prove durable and timeless, an indispensable addition to Adichie's canon.

Reader Reviews

Elyse Walters

(5/5)

139

Nov 21, 2024

Adichie’s father taught her valuable life lessons— was respectful of her boundaries — left her many years of great memories—…He was a defender of spouse…was the first to champion his wife’s accomplishments. …His humor was exceptional…He listened beautifully ……His pride of Chimamanda mattered to her more than anyone else’s. …Chimamanda not only admired her father so very much, as a daddy‘s girl, but she actually ‘liked’ him —so much he was her favorite person to hang out with. … she liked his str...

Nelly

140

I didn't plan on reading this today but what started with me planning to read a few pages just to get a feel of it, ended up with me reading it to the end and how timely because tomorrow would have been my late young sister's 28th birthday.I've learned that grief from the death of a loved one just never goes away, never really heals. Even if life returns to a semblance of normal, the grief is always there, just under the surface, ready to burst out at any slight trigger.There's so much that CNA

Reading_ Tamishly

(4/5)

The book is exactly what the title says.As a constant reader of the author's work for the past few years, I would say this book does what the author does best. Non-fiction writing at its finest.What made the reading more engrossing and understandable are the short chapters, easygoing language, anecdotes and emotions that are described the way everyone can feel at the moment.The book made me tear up at many parts. However, I wasn't expecting much of some other events that occurred in this short r...

Rebecca

This slim hardback is an expanded version of an essay Adichie published in the New Yorker in the wake of her father’s death in June 2020. With her large family split across three continents and coronavirus lockdown precluding in-person get-togethers, they had a habit of frequent video calls. She had seen her father the day before on Zoom and knew he was feeling unwell and in need of rest, but the news of his death still came as a complete shock.Adichie anticipates all the unhelpful platitudes pe...

Kerri

It feels strange to 'review' something so intensely personal, so I'll keep it brief. In Notes on Grief Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie both captures her intense grief about her father's death, and also writes a beautiful tribute to the man she has lost. It's a slim volume, my copy having 88 pages, but it contains so much and I expect it is one I will be glad to have in my book collection, knowing I can revisit it whenever I feel the need.

Nada Elshabrawy

If I had written about my father when he passed away, if I ever decide to write in the future about his death, this is how I'd have written/ I'd write.ريفيو مصور للكتاب على قناتي. #دودة_كتبhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgjqL...

Christine

(1/5)

I thought this was going to be a book about grief in a general sense. I thought there would be some insights, some naval-gazing, some revelations, some enlightenment even. So, I was surprised, as I made my way from beginning to end, that it's simply 70 pages of the author telling us how much she revered her father and how despairing she is that he is no longer alive - she cries, she beats her fists, she falls to the floor - I could not relate. (At times it felt like "over-sharing".) Everyone is

ana ☾

it's a cruel world.

Lacey

Rating downgraded after that mess of a petty, transphobic essay. Girl, get yourself together.

❀ annie ❀

'how is it that the world keeps going, breathing in and out unchanged, while in my soul there is a permanent scattering?'a heartbreakingly personal depiction of a woman's journey through grief after suddenly losing her father. i'm a long-time admirer of adichie's non-fiction essays and the writing here is just as beautiful and honest, gliding seamlessly between intimate anecdotes and reflections on the nature of grief, mourning and love. highly recommend reading this, but only if you're prepared...

Sami Kay

I’m sitting here in my hammock with tears streaming down my cheeks and I wasn’t even expecting this book to happen to me today, but it did at this perfect time.My sister died right before COVID happened and it was very unexpected. I read this book today and I felt seen and reading about so many of my feelings that are just too big for words was profound. Especially this piece:“Laughter is tightly braided into our family argot, and now we laugh remembering my father, but somewhere in the backgrou...

Julie

I truly enjoyed getting to know Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's father through her poignant memoir. It was made all the more personal by listening to the author read her own words with feeling. Favorite quotes that caused me to pause, lean in and listen to over again:"You learn how glib condolences can feel. You learn how much grief is about language. The failure of language and the grasping for language.""I did not know we cry with our muscles.""another revelation, how much laughter is part of grief...

Jon Nakapalau

One of the best books I have read this year - ranks up there with The Problem of Pain by C.S. Lewis and Wave by Sonali Deraniyagala. Pain is so overwhelming, so often we just want to hide from it, but it always finds us. We all have to confront pain; this book is one of the best ways to go about preparing for that inevitable confrontation - highest recommendation.

·Karen·

What did I think? I thought that this would be apposite to my present situation, which illustrates that grief is really not the ideal decision maker. Why should I find this helpful, it's not meant as therapy, nor will her path through darkness light mine.But this:...only now have I touched grief's core. Only now do I learn, while feeling for its porous edges, that there is no way through. I am in the center of this churning, and I have become a maker of boxes, and inside their unbending walls I

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Notes on Grief

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Reader Reviews