The Book of Form & Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki

Benny Oh is still a boy when his father Kenji, a Korean-American jazz musician at the time a little the worse for wear from drink, is run over by a chicken truck in an alley behind their house on the edge of Chinatown. Benny and his mother Anabelle both break down in very different ways. Benny ends up spinnning quite publicly out of control, gets hospitalized, hears voices, and seeks refuge within himself. Anabelle’s crisis is more of a private one. SHe too is paralyzed by grief for her dead husband and fear of losing her job, Benny, and her home. Her hoarding things holds a lot of meanings, and while the novel maybe tries to put too many together at once, with too many outside voices, there is a lot of truth about the craziness that gief induces to be learned from it.