A bereavement memoir mingles with speculative fiction, in a wise and ragged examination of grief from the author of The Power<\/p>\n
In his Remarks on Frazer\u2019s Golden Bough, Ludwig Wittgenstein alludes to an incident that followed\u00a0the death of Franz Schubert. He recalls that Schubert\u2019s brother cut several scores into small pieces, each consisting of only a few bars of music, and handed them out to Schubert\u2019s favourite pupils. This, Wittgenstein argues, was a totally understandable act of grief. He goes on to suggest, however, that if, in his grief, Schubert\u2019s brother had left the scores untouched, or even burned them, then that too would be equally legible to us. Such is the disorienting nature of loss \u2013 in its wake, anything goes.<\/p>\n
In The Strangers, Women\u2019s prize-winning author Naomi Alderman tests\u00a0this thesis to its limits. How about\u00a0dealing with grief by writing an uneasy memoir\/speculative fiction hybrid about the sudden appearance of\u00a0a new species of quasi-badgers that\u00a0seem to\u00a0improve the quality of\u00a0local\u00a0soil?<\/p>\n
![](\"https:\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/img\/media\/56968864224f608efec20a5f09acca6a7121f9e7\/859_36_3892_3114\/master\/3892.jpg?width=140&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=459f906c8b0a17d27f112189b546372f\" "\\"The")
<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"