Michael Rosen's Sad Book

Rating: 5/5

Review:
A masterpiece

This is an absolutely superb book.  It talks gently, truthfully and humanly about Michael Rosen's response to the death of his son Eddie at the age of 19.

The book is very brief but it says more about loss and grief than many books of hundreds of pages.  Michael Rosen has a rare combination of the insight to see what is happening, the courage to accept it and the honesty to speak it plainly.  It is a deeply human and humane book in which – thank heavens! – he acknowledges that grief makes you very sad (there is no talk of "closure" - ugh! - or "moving on")  and that this is a natural human response.  He brings out the simple truth, so often not understood, that trying not to appear too sad for the sake of others is not the same as not being sad yourself.  Throughout, the book is gentle but truthful, very funny in places and very touching in others.

Quentin Blake's illustrations are quite wonderful.  He catches and expresses the intangibles and complexities of feeling in all of this quite beautifully and his observation is, as always, brilliant.  There are some very touching pictures, but some very witty ones, too: watch out for Eddie's sock in the Sofa Football sequence, for example, and the picture of a startled cat made me laugh out loud.

This, quite simply, is one of the best things I have ever read about loss and grief.  Everyone of every age should read it in my view.  It's a miniature masterpiece.