Although it is only partly about grief, Scars is the kind of book you might buy for a bereaved friend. With fortuitous timing, my review copy arrived not long after I suffered a significant loss of my own. Reading it proved to be a useful experience and a healing one, but I had to persist. There are essays, poems and meditations. The essays read like lengthy and thoughtful homilies: on poetry and affliction, on sickness, martyrdom, and the loss of a friend (Sr Joan McNamara). I felt their impact – it was, at times, almost unbearable, and rightly so – but in my raw and contrary state I could not appreciate them. Paul Murray is strong on Job’s comforters and the damage they do, yet a didactic element is unavoidable, given the form. It was too much for me. I put them aside