Read more
'One of the finest accounts of the mysterious workings of grief I have ever read.' Helen Macdonald
I tore the arse of my pyjamas one morning, about a year before he died, and my father sewed it up perfect in a few minutes, just like that. I was looking at them this morning actually, his line of white stitches. It's beautiful really. They've held.
'Beautiful, strange and completely compelling.' Olivia Laing
'I read it with awe and sorrow.' Fatima Bhutto
After the sudden death of his father, Nick Blackburn embarks on a singular, labyrinthine journey to understand his loss. How do you create an existence when all you can see is a void?
The Reactor is a memoir about absence and creative possibilities, assembled like the pieces of a puzzle. Through philosophy, music, fashion, psychology, art and film, Blackburn travels a vast panorama of ideas and characters to offer an entirely new exploration of grief. This is a book about looking for and finding chain reactions and human connection - a work of enduring fragmentary beauty.
About the author
Nick Blackburn is a therapist who specialises in LGBTQ+ issues and completed a PhD in English Literature at Cambridge (on the use of quotation marks in Renaissance drama).
Summary
'One of the finest accounts of the mysterious workings of grief I have ever read.' Helen MacdonaldI tore the arse of my pyjamas one morning, about a year before he died, and my father sewed it up perfect in a few minutes, just like that.
Foreword
A crystalline, inventive account of loss from a thrilling young literary talent - and a journey through grief's destructive and creative possibilities.
Report
Nick Blackburn's The Reactor is devastatingly affecting. An episodic, elegiac bricolage of everyday life and longing, it's fiercely brilliant, raw, and beautiful, and one of the finest accounts of the mysterious workings of grief I have ever read. It pulled my heart to absolute pieces and left me reeling with love. Helen Macdonald
