Coping with grief: four books and a podcast that may help

“You must go on. I can’t go on. I’ll go on.” So wrote Samuel Beckett at the end of his 1953 novel The Unnamable. One of the most famous lines in modern literature, it precisely encapsulates the paradox of the existential condition. But it also applies just as much to the process of grieving – the deeply human struggle between anguish and overwhelm on the one hand, while striving for resilience on the other. 

It’s very likely you’ve been there or are perhaps going through something like this right now – in the UK, one in four people will experience the death of someone close to them. And suffice to say: grief affects everyone differently – there’s no right or wrong way to experience it.

On a personal note, following the shock discovery of a friend having taken his own life in my old bedroom at the end of October 2011, I wrote “When a loved one decides to enact the ultimate violence on themselves, it shakes up a snowstorm that never properly settles.” Some years later, on the anniversary of his passing, I dreamt about him. In the dream, he was offering me a cup of tea. “But you know I’m allergic to caffeine,” I said. “And I’m dead,” he shrugged. “But things change.” 

1. My Brother’s Ashes Are in a Sandwich Bag by Michelle Brasier

Writer, actor and comedian Michelle Brasier wrote her award-nominated debut memoir following the death of her dad and brother from cancer – and after learning she herself has a 97 percent chance of developing the disease. 

It’s been praised for its frank honesty and mordant humour: one chapter, The Actual Stages of Grief is a re-imagining of the well-known the Kübler-Ross five stages of grief model, from “My World Is Threatened: the moment bad news arrives and life collapses into a single focus – the person you love. Everything else fades to static” to “Pizza: the almost comic realisation that you’re hungry again. Life, absurdly, goes on and you get to decide what to do with it next.”

A quote from the book: “The idea was to put him somewhere else, somewhere better. I don’t know. And because I don’t know, my serving of Paul Brasier’s leftovers is in a sandwich bag.”

Find out more about My Brother’s Ashes Are in a Sandwich Bag

2. Grief Works: Stories of Life, Death and Surviving by Julia Samuel

The UK’s leading grief psychotherapist Julia Samuel offers practical advice and emotional support on coping with loss, via real patient stories. It deals with five types of death: of a partner, a parent, a sibling, a child, and one’s own impending mortality; and provides case studies and reflections for each. First published in 2017, it’s become something of a key resource for grievers and caregivers alike.

A quote from the book: “Grief doesn’t hit us in tidy phases and stages, nor is it something that we forget and move on from; it is an individual process that has a momentum of its own.” 

Find out more about Grief Works 

3. Grief Is the Thing with Feathers by Max Porter

Porter’s debut, the winner of the Dylan Thomas Prize was described by the Telegraph as “deeply comic, hopelessly sad”. It’s an experimental novella, a fragmented blend of poetry, and allegory, tracing a family’s slow, jagged, healing process after the sudden loss of a wife and mother. With a meta hat-tip to Ted Hughes, an anthropomorphic, human-sized crow represents the grief experienced by the newly widowed husband and two sons she’s left behind (“Motherless children are pure crow”) – and which eventually departs when the family no longer needs him.

A quote from the book:  “Moving on, as a concept, is for stupid people, because any sensible person knows grief is a long-term project. I refuse to rush.”

Find out more about Grief Is the Thing with Feathers  

4. The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

Often described as the defining modern classic about grief, the Pulitzer Prize finalist is a raw, deeply personal memoir recounting Didion’s experience of mourning the sudden death of her husband, John Gregory Dunne at on Christmas 2003, while simultaneously caring for their seriously ill daughter Quintana. It explores the various stages of grief, which “comes in waves, paroxysms, sudden apprehensions that weaken the knees and blind the eyes and obliterate the dailiness of life. She writes about the way grief alters perception, memory, and identity. And about the desperation to make sense of loss, through an experience Didion calls “magical thinking” – the belief that by thinking or acting a certain way, events can somehow be reversed.

A quote from the book:  “Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it.”

Find out more about The Year of Magical Thinking

5. Griefcast podcast hosted by Cariad Lloyd

Comedian and actor Lloyd, whose father died when she was 15 (“It took me many years to be able to express what I had gone through”) first launched her multi-award-winning podcast in 2016 – but it would gain even more attention during the pandemic. 

It features candid, often humorous interviews with comedians, actors, writers and others, sharing very personal stories about grief and loss, with the overriding message: ‘You’re not alone.’ Conversations are refreshingly unhurried, because, as Lloyd says, “nobody’s going to change the subject.” 

The series begins with Adam Buxton on the death of his father – a later episode is about his mother, who passed away during lockdown; plus Robin Ince, whose mum passed away following complications from a serious car accident; and acclaimed novelist and journalist Julia Raeside about losing her brother Colin to osteosarcoma and her dad, Jim, to PSP.

A quote from the podcast:  “Grief is billions of different emotions – it’s not just ‘Boo-hoo, I’m very sad.” (Julia Raeside)

Find out more about the Griefcast podcast