NOTES ON GRIEF // BOOK REVIEW

On 10 June 2020, the scholar James Nwoye Adichie died suddenly in Nigeria.

In this tender and powerful essay, expanded from the original New Yorker text, his daughter, a self-confessed daddy’s girl, remembers her beloved father. Notes on Grief is at once a tribute to a long life of grace and wisdom, the story of a daughter’s fierce love for a parent, and a revealing examination of the layers of loss and the nature of grief.

I’ve had this book with me for a long while but I couldn’t find that ‘right moment’ to read it. How circumstances change and you feel the need of something comforting, someone to understand how you feel, to talk in your language and to say, ‘I know what you mean’. Finally, the time was right. This was exactly what I needed.

Notes on Grief is a bittersweet, overwhelming, and heartfelt essay on loss, love and family from an author I adore, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. The memoir (in a way) starts with the sudden death of scholar James Nwoye Adichie on 10 June 2020 in Nigeria. This book talks about the meaning of grief, the void, emotional outburst in the most tender and powerful manner. A daughter’s tribute to her beloved father, it’s a story of a girl who lost her hero, a man whom she adored and felt the safest to be with.

Adichie, as always, won my heart with her simple, emotional writing manner. There were a number of instances that caught my attention and I read it again and again just to relive the moment. They were so relatable. This is a book that will break you and mend you at the same time. Yes, I recommend this one. But wait for the right time, you’ll know when you would need it.

• 5/5 Stars
• Find my review on Goodreads