Toward the end of her slim volume, NOTES ON GRIEF, writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie states, “We don’t know how to grieve until we grieve.” This simple, poignantly true statement is centered in this work of nonfiction, which finds Adichie processing the unexpected death of her father, who is half a world away, a distance only increased by the pandemic.

Though James Nwoye Adichie didn’t die of COVID-19, the disease further compounds the year of loss and anxiety and keeps Adichie from traveling home to Nigeria to be with her family as they mourn. In less than 70 pages, she grapples with her pain and chaos of grief, pays beautiful tribute to her father, and moves herself to be able to write about him in the past tense.

"NOTES ON GRIEF is a candid exploration of a relatable loss. Adichie articulates her confusion and sorrow, her moments of unexpected peace sparked by memory, with an aching honesty and gorgeous prose."

Adichie’s father died just days after she spoke with him and her siblings via Zoom from her home in the U.S. He had been tired, dealing with the effects of kidney disease, but his death came as a shock. Her physical reaction --- screaming and pounding the floor --- scares her four-year-old daughter. In the first few days, she mourns with her body as much as with her emotions: “Why are my sides so sore and achy? It’s from crying, I’m told. I did not know that we cry with our muscles. The pain is not surprising but its physicality is…” With her siblings, she is able to remember her father as he was --- funny, smart, successful and kind-hearted. The little inside jokes they shared take on greater significance and symbolism.

Adichie, with a narrative strength and a graceful style, moves from universal concerns like the inadequacies of pat condolences to the specifics of her father’s life and love. “Grief is not gauzy,” she discovers, “it is substantial, oppressive, a thing opaque.” She is torn between holding fast to the burden of grief and moving quickly past it, and finds herself surprised by the possessiveness she feels of the pain. This book is a personal record of this burden, this pain, and her attempt to hold it --- as if holding some part of her father --- even as she inevitably comes to terms with his death.

NOTES ON GRIEF is a candid exploration of a relatable loss. Adichie articulates her confusion and sorrow, her moments of unexpected peace sparked by memory, with an aching honesty and gorgeous prose. This is a book to read and revisit.