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1 A spill  I’m drinking coffee in bed and reading The Reactor I feel so close to everything Nick Blackburn writes that when he describes lying in his bed and stretching both arms out, I want to call out to him, ‘be careful not to spill the coffee!’   The previous page in the book ended with, ‘You’ve been dead for a year and a half’ The next reads, ‘I’m crying a bit writing this, Dad’ (pages 14, 15)   2 It’s not that I’d wish this knowledge on anyone I tell a friend that I am writing this book review He has read The Reactor and says he didn’t think it was exactly a book about grief, that it was mostly about distraction – YouTube and Alexander McQueen and other personal obsessions I had started working on this piece by reading Kathryn Schulz’s Lost & Found and so I doubt myself, wondering if I pitched the wrong books Then I realise, I remember, the friend I am speaking with has not crossed the precipice of grief, so he doesn’t fully see how it is everything Like how Blackburn describes the clean-up efforts after the nuclear disaster in Fukushima They began by removing the first three centimetres of the topsoil from the ground, and what was exposed beneath it was covered in sheets of black plastic ‘You look at it and it’s still there and it’s still there It’s still there It doesn’t go away’ (page 210)   3 It doesn’t go away When Schulz’s book came out in January 2022, I remembered I read an excerpt of it in the New Yorker, where Schulz is a staff writer It made a huge impression on me at the time, but it feels like it’s been a while I search for it only to see it was published in February 2017 Time is long and publishing schedules longer, but when I realise how many years Schulz has been working on this memoir, the only thing I can think of is how we are constantly promised things get better over time   And maybe they don’t I feel inconclusive about how