What Literature Teaches Us About Grief

Grief is a challenge that most of us will face sooner or later. The death of a loved one changes your life, their absence creating a human-sized void where they used to reside.

It doesn’t matter if you weren’t particularly close to the person who left. It doesn’t even matter if you did not like them very much. We are all human, and something in us reacts strangely when, all of a sudden, another person is no longer present in the world.

I have discovered, throughout my life, that grief is far more complicated than weeping uncontrollably and dressing in black. It is not limited to the month, or even the year, that follows a loss. Over time, we might accept that the person we knew is no longer around, but that does not mean we ever become accustomed to their absence. A human being, with their words, creativity, mannerisms, and even annoying habits, leaves a space behind when they die. That absence remains visible to us, sometimes from the corner of the eye.

It is sometimes difficult to speak about these emotions with the people we know in real life. Some of our acquaintances might be on their own journeys, attempting to grapple with loss in whatever way works for them, which often means they do not wish to broach the topic at all. There is also the risk that, if we confess after a certain amount of time that we are still grieving, we will receive patronizing comments.

That was a long time ago, someone might say.

Go to therapy.

Or someone else might scoff: But they weren’t even nice to you!

As we have already established, grief is messy. We cannot spend a weekend crying into a blanket and emerge ready to face the world again. Many times, grief does not take the form of tears at all. It can express itself as anger, confusion, or a complete inability to function in situations that would normally be simple and familiar.

This is uncomfortable to talk about, so we tend not to. We attempt to sweep these feelings under the rug, hoping that if we cannot see them, they will eventually disappear.

Literature is one of the few places where I can truly focus on the messier aspects of grief. Living vicariously through characters, I can watch them struggle to resume their lives after a loved one is laid to rest. I can observe them attempting to keep their emotions in check, make good decisions, and somehow climb out of rock bottom so they can face the world again.

Books offer us safe, private places to explore emotions that, in many circles, are difficult to discuss in public. They offer a kind of emotional exploration that therapy cannot replicate.

This year, I’ve read several books in which grief and death become catalysts for the protagonist. Sometimes the death is sudden; sometimes it is the grim end of a long and painful battle against illness. Sometimes the protagonist experiences bursts of energy after their loved one leaves. At other times, they become listless and shut themselves away from the world.

There is no single right way to grieve. Anyone who pretends otherwise has misunderstood the nature of human emotion.

In this essay, I felt called to discuss some novels in which I thought the subject of death was handled well. Though death is a theme in all of them, they approach it in different ways. This makes sense: we are not all the same, and each of us will eventually face our mortality in a way shaped by our own lives, personalities, and circumstances.

The novels I’ve chosen are After Annie by Anna Quindlen, My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh, Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell, and This Is Not About Us by Allegra Goodman.