The Reactor: A Book about Grief and Repair

by Nick Blackburn

'One of the finest accounts of the mysterious workings of grief I have ever read.' Helen Macdonald'Completely compelling.' Olivia Laing'Read it with awe and sorrow.' Fatima BhuttoAfter 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.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, Biography Memoir

416 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2023

Reviews

[Rebecca · Rating 1 out of 5]

I’ll read any bereavement memoir going, and the cover commendations from Olivia Laing and Helen Macdonald made this seem like a sure bet. Unfortunately, this is not a bereavement memoir but an exercise in self-pity and free association. The book opens two weeks after Blackburn’s father’s death – “You have died but it’s fine, Dad.” – and proceeds in titled fragments of one line to a few paragraphs. Blackburn sometimes addresses his late father directly, but more often the “you” is himself. He becomes obsessed with the Chernobyl disaster (even travelling to Belarus), which provides the overriding, and overstretched, title metaphor – “the workings of grief are unconscious, invisible. Like radiation.”

From here the author indulges in pop culture references and word association: Alexander McQueen’s fashion shows, Joni Mitchell’s music, Ingmar Bergman’s films, Salvador Dalí’s paintings and so on. These I at least recognized; there were plenty of other random allusions that meant nothing to me. All of this feels obfuscating, as if Blackburn is just keeping busy: moving physically and mentally to distract from his own feelings. A therapist focusing on LGBT issues, he surely recognizes his own strategy here. This seems like a diary you’d keep in a bedside drawer (there’s also the annoyance of no proper italicization or quotation marks for works of art), not something you’d try to get published as a bereavement memoir.

The bigger problem is there is no real attempt to convey a sense of his father. It would be instructive to go back and count how many pages actually mention his father. One page on his death; a couple fleeting mentions of his mental illness being treated with ECT and lithium. Most revealing of all, ironically, is the text of a postcard he wrote to his mother on a 1963 school trip to Austria. “I want to tell you more about my father, but honestly I feel like I hardly knew him. There was always his body and that was enough,” Blackburn writes. Weaselling out of his one task – to recreate his father for readers – made this an affected dud.

Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.

[Bilal · Rating 2 out of 5]

With some moments poignant, causing some self-reflection and introspection, this book had potential. However, the vast majority of it gets tied up in all-too-personal references that of course hold significance for the author, but do not quite translate as well as one might hope.

[Callum Morris-Horne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Update:

After reading Blackburn’s book for the second time, I feel like I can appreciate the overarching framework better. I was frustrated as to why, a work that considered curios I am most interested in and meditated on some of my favourite, cultural artefacts, left me a bit cold on first reading—so I picked it up again. I still think bits could be cut, and the author could have done a bit more handholding when it comes to signposting some of the significances those references had and how they pertained the central bereavement. (I’m stupid and sometimes need my intelligence to be underestimated😂). But then again, grief, like the historical disaster the book uses at its anchor, is a hyperobject in Timothy Morton’s sense of the word: inexpressible, impossibly interconnected and interconnecting; memories latching onto and reacting with the most, seemingly, unrelated of things. ‘The Reactor’ is a poetic testament to this. I also think that the book, and indeed any nonfiction text dealing with personal tragedies, should be partially immune to criticism - who are we to interrogate that which is truly felt and that which kaleidoscopes in the bereaved mind’s reactor core? Reconsidering my earlier criticism, I can better empathise with the effects of grief, especially related to a father with whom a gay man such as myself might not have had many mutual cultural connections with, and how these can have such a fusional outcome; feverish and fragmentary as a note page on an iPhone or a nuclear meltdown.

4/5.

———

3.5 rounded up.

In ‘The Reactor’, Blackburn inspects the machinery of grief (over his father’s death) through the overarching metaphor of the Chernobyl disaster. Published by Faber & Faber, I found out about this book in a TLS review and ordered it straight away, considering my dissertation is on ‘Chernobylit’, even though, regrettably, I won’t have enough time to write about it in any adequate detail now.

Blackburn’s memoir is a bricolage of prosaic fragments, often waxing poetic and replete with cultural analyses and a panoramic tapestry of references: from the fashions of McQueen to the music of Kate Bush and Joni Mitchell; the performances of Julie Walters to the literature of Derek Jarman and life of Quentin Crisp. I appreciated the queer specificity of these references, though I can see how the (sometimes tenuous) attempts at connecting them to Chernobyl/the dad’s death can feel a bit intellectually masturbatory at times, (even if those that were mentioned are some of my favourite things). Yet, having before thought about how one might ‘queer’ Chernobyl, I’m keen to return to this aspect of the book in the future.

The form of the book reminded me of Nelson’s Bluets and Lockwood’s No One Is Talking About This; though it is less successfully structured—to a large extent matter-of-fact, observational and so not as beautifully written— and could have been much stronger with a substantial cut. Sometimes, and self-confessedly, the fragments read like those pseudo-philosophical musings hurriedly typed into iPhone’s Notes app on one’s commute, and I think a bunch should have stayed there. Of course, this criticism might seem harsh considering the mournful subject matter, but the elegiac quality and emotional impact of the book is restricted by the reader not really getting a chance to know Blackburn’s father, (even the author admits to not feeling as though he knew him). Getting meta, this is analogous to the unfathomability of the Chernobyl disaster and the radiation released, but that does not help the reader to fathom and feel the weight of that which has been lost. That being said, I did read all 400 pages in a night which is unlike me and, like my regard for writers such as Ali Smith and Sara Baume (whose ‘handiwork’ comparably deals with a father’s death through intertextuality), did marvel at the accretion of Blackburn’s leitmotifs and the finely-spun spiderweb of his allusions, though found myself less moved overall.

[Hannah · Rating 1 out of 5]

Questioning how this got published

[Donna Johnstone · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was looking for a book about grief to help me make sense of recent loss of my father. This was recommended and highly reviewed by authors I love ane respect. It disturbed me and now I feel differently about those authors. It is supposed to be about grief but there is no talk of the dead father. Instead it is all about the authors own thoughts and bragging about how knowledgeable and cool he is. I was left empty and angry because he gave no insight at all about loss and mourning just a narcissistic feed of thoughts like so many things in social media times

[Jet R · Rating 4 out of 5]

Alright some vignettes in this collection I just do not understand. But maybe that’s also partly the point? As the author is someone that wrote this whilst (and possibly still) is going through grief himself. Grief is so differently for everyone, that not everyone will understand.

The general chaos in the collection I find to be an expression of this journey of grief and loss as well. Because it is chaotic, it really can be, because that’s grief. It goes up and down and sometimes you just do not understand what is happening or what you are feeling.

[Nicola · Rating 3 out of 5]

Probably 2.5 really. A decent idea but didn’t quite do what I’d hoped (and expected it would). Agree with other reviewers that there are so many personal references that just don’t translate into connection for the reader. All quite disappointing really.

[Shannon Clinton-Copeland · Rating 2 out of 5]

Really this book should’ve been called A Book About Disaster, which would have been a more apt title speaking to the various personal, national and international disasters on which Blackburn meditates. As it is, this is less a book about grief and more a portrait of a modern mind. While I am a keen lover of vignette storytelling, so many of these just didn’t land for me—they often failed to reach any kind of conclusion, though perhaps that was on purpose to speak to the lack of conclusion in grieving. However, I really do feel like this book could’ve shone if it was shorter, punchier and if the readers weren’t kept at what feels like a great distance from the author and his father.

[Aimee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rounded up from 3.5 stars. This book is great, w really moving and complex and truthful discussion of the difficulty of grief. The first fifty or so pages gripped me instantly. At times, it gets a little lost along the way. I lost the thread, what Blackburn was trying to say. Maybe I just didn’t get it, but when he pulled me back in, without fail, it grasped me with both hands again. It’s difficult and it’s complicated snd it’s beautiful. I love it.

[Ramisa · Rating 1 out of 5]

Grief is so unspoken, a topic often untouched so as someone who has recently lost their father I was partly excited (sorry no better word!) to read this… I thought it might reflect the chaos of grief, as it forms and deforms in the background of everyday life but I came away knowing a lot more about Chernobyl and Alexander McQueen…. Grief/loss is mentioned probably a total of 10 times in the book so if like me you are looking for something that humanises grief, this isn’t it.

[Roma · Rating 4 out of 5]

can't believe this book talks about alexander mcqueen, ma anand sheela and sale the three foundations of my being

[Sam Hatia · Rating 2 out of 5]

An interesting concept and while I appreciate it's very personal, some of the references are so niche

[Phoebe · Rating 3 out of 5]

(Listened) liked the stream of thought style with a varying blend of despair and pop culture references

[Louise Pyner · Rating 2 out of 5]

Was a great book but I didn’t quite follow it, the writing structure is unique and it speaks about Chernobyl and things I found hard to relate to. A great book about the process of grief though!

[Helen Victoria Murray · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this. Its meander between separate but interrelated histories and private reflection perfectly capture the non-linear and intensely personal processes of grief.

[Jemelle · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book was not what I thought it was going to be. In a bad way. I don’t feel it was about grief at all. I only managed to get to the end because I thought the story would change.

[Leigh McLintock · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is not a book about grief and repair this is a book about a Chernobyl hyperfixation.

[Rebecca Latter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quite weird, lost me in parts, struggled to grasp the relevance of some of the passages - reminded me of a Christopher Nolan film, very sporadic. Still found it moving in some parts.

[Juliano · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Reactor is a dazzling and utterly absorbing memoir about grief and repair, navigating the aftermath of the death of Blackburn’s father through pop culture, psychoanalysis, theory, and the dark history of nuclear disaster. This is one of those books that is so eclectic it could have been written just for me — my beloved Kate Bush features alongside Joni Mitchell, the writing of Svetlana Alexievich, a range of films, plays, artworks, books, and the most iconic reference, deserving of its place in this literary masterwork: Neal McBeal the Navy Seal, from supreme TV show BoJack Horseman. Stitching together this prosaic tapestry is the most gorgeous writing, fragmented as a mind in grief’s freefall: “Here’s where I am, I guess, on this strange journey of grief, unsure of myself, in the mood for strong forces. Looking for a river I can follow to the sea.” The Reactor is a book of its own class, both for its elliptical and palpable evocation of grief and for its stylistic singularity, its use of white space and digression to form a narrative as tricky as it is meaningful. And, like all my favourite books, it’s one that fills me with fury, a book so invigorating it tempts me to quit reading and writing altogether. I know it’s only January but The Reactor is already guaranteed to be one of the best books of 2022.

[OLIVER · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this book so much. Other people mention how the book doesn’t focus much on his father. Totally disagree. I love how Nick tries to - even struggles - to link thoughts and ideas and words and images and film and fashion together. There’s a sort of mania in trying to return to his father, or an understanding of himself and his father.