“How is it the world keeps going, breathing in and out unchanged, while in my soul there is a permanent scattering?”

Notes on Grief is a short, intense account of losing a parent suddenly.

Novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie reflects on the months after her father’s death and how they are marked by sharp moments of rage, misery, panic, or subdued or crippling sadness. She describes how heartbreak manifests physically with muscles that ache from crying and a heartbeat that races without warning. As painful as this book was to write (and at times, to read), grief is a tribute to love, and her father’s humor and care is present throughout.

This memoir stands next to Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking and Jayson Greene’s Once More We Saw Stars.