Grief and how to handle it still remains a subject our culture is shy of. Shows of grief make us uncomfortable, we are unable to express our support, our solidarity and we cast down our eyes or turn slightly away.

In 'Almost' Rao does not shy away from the many dimensions of grief a father goes through on the death of his teenage daughter. She lays out his suffering, his thoughts, his estrangement from his work, his wife, his home, his life. To be able to do this she pairs him with the philosopher Roland Barthes, who spouts quotes but does not engage leaving HIM alone as we are all alone in our griefs and sorrows. The death of loved ones does shake up the foundations of our existence and having Barthes questioning what is real and what isn't may initially seem not in the moment but it is in fact so in the moment because it is at this time that we question, what we are, what we are doing, what we shall do?

I enjoyed this book very much more than I did 'The Lovely Bones another book about a father grieving.

An ARC gently provided by author/publisher via Netgalley

I must admit that it took me a lot of effort to actually get started on this book. I think I read Chapter one at least 5 times before I moved on. Overall, it's a quick read about grief. The story reads like the father's journal as he manages the grief of the unexpected loss of his teenage daughter. As someone who struggles with grief, I appreciate how the author shows how external people also manage someone else's grief. I agree with some of the other reviews that I would've appreciated an expansion on the processing of grief and the actual impact. It took me a while to actually get into the story, but the actual story isn't that lengthy.

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

This was a particularly hard book to read since I'm dealing with my own loss. Thank you Net Galley for the book

An interesting study of the grief of a poetry professor after his young daughter's sudden death. Whilst some parts were very moving in this novella, some parts didn’t hang together very well and I didn’t find the character very believable or true which affected my ability to really sink into this story.

this book just wasn't for me. I wanted something different than what i've been reading and this seemed great. I was really disappointed in this book. A man looses his daughter to a car accident and he's sent home from work for showing emotion. I think if you had a child die you would show emotion and show that grief. I found it rather boring and couldn't get into it at all.

This was a short, quick read about grief. It reads like a journal; a father's struggle to manage the horrific loss of his daughter. I was expecting something a bit more nuanced. It's a literal-blow by blow description of grief and the aftermath of an unexpected loss of his teenage daughter.
But, it was also a commentary on grief and how it affects other people. People don't "want to know" or hear the details, or feel HIS pain. Grief is difficult for everyone. people don't know what to say, or provide comfort other than the trite, "sorry for your loss."
He struggles and attempts to return to 'normal, everyday life" and returns to work and is sent home.
He is distraught and cannot concentrate, feeling abandoned and left to 'deal with his grief' on his own,
He and his wife have difficulty discussing the tragedy, and to process the loss of their only child.
I would have preferred the Author expand on the narrative of processing grief, loss and to explore the impact it has, on those around him.
Alsways a pleasure to read Fairlight Books!
Thank you Netgalley for the opportunity to read and review this book.
jb/https://seniorbooklounge.blogspot.com/

A beautiful and heartbreaking study of grief. Whilst the prose at times feels sparse it is lyrical and filled with grace and dignity. This novella has stayed with me long after reading.

Ami Rao’s novella’s a study of grief that draws extensively and explicitly on the work of Roland Barthes, who seems to be an increasingly popular source of inspiration for a wide array of writers, some more successful in their use of his words and thought than others. Unfortunately, this strikes me as very much in the “less successful” category. A 14-year-old girl is killed in a traffic accident on her way home from school, after the event her father a poetry professor struggles to come to terms with his feelings of loss. The tangential link between her death and Roland Barthes’s - also killed after being hit by a vehicle while crossing a road - leads the grieving father to conjure up passages from Barthes’s writings as he mourns his daughter’s accidental death. It’s a potentially interesting approach to writing about the loss of a child but the style and the story didn’t’ work for me in any way whatsoever. I liked Rao’s attempt to disrupt narrative conventions by including lists, diagrams and other material but the results just didn’t hang together, the writing seemed incredibly forced, and I didn’t find the father’s voice at all convincing. The shifts in register, the character’s use of language, his ideas, didn’t fit together, not least his apparent notions about literature: a poetry lecturer fascinated by French theory who describes poetry in curiously dated, conventional terms that completely contradict his supposed theoretical underpinnings. I also found the ways in which grief played out here, despite the experimental trappings, quite predictable. From looking at other reviews a number of readers have found this a more positive reading experience, so it may be that this just wasn’t the right book for me.

Thanks to Netgalley UK and publisher Fairlight Books for an arc

While only 160 pages long, it took me over a week to finish this book because I wanted to really take my time with it. I found myself highlighting so many passages and taking the time to sit and let Ami's words wash over me. I enjoyed the quotes she used from Barthes and how they related to the situations occurring in the novella.

The subject matter is also something that gave me pause. I found that I couldn't sit with this for too long since it is mainly about grief. This is more something to dip in and out of when you're wanting something with a lot of substance.

Ami does a phenomenal job of grasping the pain that comes with grief, the debilitating nature of it. Our unnamed main character struggles with the violent loss of his daughter, a type of grief we all hope to never have to endure. The author handles this subject with grace and gives it the raw emotions it deserves. This coupled with her signature lyrical prose, and you know you have something special here.

Ami Rao is one of my favorite authors and she does the theme of grief justice in this heavy yet very important novella. I would highly recommend anything by her!

What is the saddest world in the English language? For the protagonist of this novel, it’s the eponymous almost. It is sad, isn’t it? Poetically so. And this novel is very poetic in a way. A visceral dissection of grief, this is a story of a father whose fourteen-year-old daughter gets hit by a car and dies. It isn’t anyone’s fault, it’s just one of those things. Suddenly, his life is undone, his marriage, his work, his very essence of self is irrevocably altered.
Not an easy book to read, which may explain why mine is the first review on GR for it and to be fair, it took me some time to get into it, but overall, it’s a compelling portrait of devastation well worth your attention.
It’s structured somewhat experimentally and features such heavy excerpts from Roland Barthes, that it almost seems like a cowriting effort. After all, the actual novel is barely more than a novella and each of its tiny chapter is preceded with a quotation. But it works, because it does add to the desired sum total of grief presented from every angle. Grief at its most grievous, soul-slamming, apocalyptic sort of force.
Not as an enjoyable read as such and certainly not an easy one to recommend, but if you consider books as travelogue into people’s psyche, this might work for you, since not all such journeys lead to happy sunny places. Certainly an interesting read. Thanks Netgalley.

I was going to write a gushing review of this book however I feel I should write my review in the manner the book is written in.

I was worried this book was going to be a bit abstract and high brow however I was glad to be proven wrong.

It was simplistic in the most satisfying way.

Beautiful. Heartbreaking. Honest.

Thank you to the author, Netgalley and Fairlight Books for the ARC in exchange for an honest review