Book Review: Adichie explores

Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche’s latest book “Notes on Grief”. Image via Twitter @4thEstateBooks.

Book Review: Adichie explores loss and grief in the time of COVID

Author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s latest book, ‘Notes on Grief’, has been hailed as one of her most tender and profound works to date.

Book Review: Adichie explores

Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche’s latest book “Notes on Grief”. Image via Twitter @4thEstateBooks.

Critically acclaimed and best-selling Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s latest book, Notes on Grief, is an intimate and raw exploration of grief and loss during a global pandemic.

Adichie invites readers into her world of loss after the sudden death of her beloved father, the scholar James Nwoye Adichie. Chimamanda and her family were left with not only their own heart-breaking loss, but also with the task of trying to navigate this loss in the time of COVID-19, which prevented Chimamanda from travelling to her family after the news first broke.

Stuck in limbo, Adichie and her family tried to organise a funeral and a proper burial, all the while being stranded in the confusion of international travel restrictions. During this time, Adichie resorts to the thing she knows best, writing, in an effort to make sense of these layers of loss and the brutal nature of grief.

The result is an incredibly profound, tender and powerful exploration of Adichie’s heart break, which reaches deep into the reader’s soul, making you feel every memory and every tear.

A book which truly speaks to the times, Notes on Grief is one of those rare pieces of literature which truly capture something of the indescribable pain of losing a loved one.

Adichie’s new book celebrated in time of controversy for the writer

Despite the success of her latest book, Adichie has been shrouded in controversy regarding an essay she wrote and shared about the betrayal of one of her former mentees.

In the now viral essay, titled “It is obscene: A true reflection in three parts”, Adichie shares her experience and views on cancel culture, social media slander and her conflict with a former student.

This media storm surrounding the essay does not seem to place a damper on her Notes on Grief, which has gone on to receive critical acclaim.

‘Notes on Grief’: Memorable quotes

You learn how much grief is about language, the failure of language and the grasping for language.

My best friend Uju tells me how my father turned to her at the end of my Harvard Class Day speech, in 2018, and, in a voice more powerful for being muted said, “Look they are all standing for her”. I weep at this. Part of grief’s tyranny is that it robs you of remembering the things that matter. His pride in me mattered more than anyone else’s.

‘Never” feel so unfairly punitive. For the rest of my life I will live with my hands outstretched for things that are no longer there.

A friend sends me a line for my novel, “Grief is the celebration of love. Those who could feel real grief were lucky to have loved”. How odd to find it so exquisitely painful to read my own words.

I’m filled with disbelieving astonishment that the mailman comes as usual and that people are inviting me to speak somewhere and that regular news alerts appear on my phone screen. How is it that the world keeps going, breathing in and out unchanged, while in my soul there is a permanent scattering.

More about the author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Image via Twitter @Jezebel

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was born in Enugu, Nigeria, as the fifth of six children to Igbo parents, Grace Ifeoma and James Nwoye Adichie.

She completed her secondary education at the University of Nigeria’s school, receiving several academic prizes. She went on to study medicine and pharmacy at the same university for a year and a half. During this period, she edited the campus magazine The Compass.

At the age of 19, Chimamanda left for the United States and she went on to pursue a degree in communication and political science at Eastern Connecticut State University.

It is during her senior year at Eastern that she started working on her first novel, Purple Hibiscus, which was released in October 2003. The book has received wide critical acclaim: it was shortlisted for the Orange Fiction Prize (2004) and was awarded the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book (2005).

In 2011-2012, she was awarded a fellowship by the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University, which allowed her to finalize her third novel, Americanah. The book was released to great critical acclaim in 2013.

Chimamanda is married and has a daughter. She divides her time between Nigeria, where she regularly teaches writing workshops, and the United States.

Notes on Grief is published by Harper Collins Publishers and is available at Exclusive Books.