Her deep understanding of the responsibilities of the people who prepare the dead for their final stages, and the bereaved for the first rituals of grief is absolutely apparent in the writing of William’s story.

A Terrible Kindness book review: character-driven drama, post A Terrible Kindness book review: character-driven drama, post

This beautifully written debut novel examines hopes and expectations, disappointments and misunderstandings, insecurities and fears. From boarding school dormitories to student lodgings, embalming rooms to the choir stalls of Cambridge, homemade biscuits to abandoned roast dinners – a vivid cast of characters and an incredible journey. Like a red tulip to Mum! Special mention must go to the recurrent musical threads of Myfanwy and Allegri’s Miserere mei, Deus which are so elegantly woven that only a hard heart would be unmoved. Of course, everyone needs distance to appreciate the quirks and oddities of their particular childhood. My father was the superintendent of a Birmingham city council crematorium, and the job came with a small house set within the grounds. From our kitchen window we could see the wrought iron gates through which the funeral processions came every 20 minutes and rolled past our window. It was all I knew. It was normal. Nevertheless, I think I was slower than I could have been to realise just how unusual it was to have spent my formative years in such an environment and to consider how it shaped the person and writer I became.She was inspired to write the book after hearing about the volunteer embalmers at Aberfan and ” wanted to find a way to tell a story that honoured and respected both them and the families so deeply affected by the disaster.” Throughout the book we’re given hints that some calamity befell William when he was a boy, causing him to leave Cambridge abruptly without completing a coveted scholarship scholarship at a university choir school . It’s not until the final chapters do we learn what happened, and why this has caused William so much anguish over the years.

REVIEW: A Terrible Kindness by Jo Browning Wroe | The Good REVIEW: A Terrible Kindness by Jo Browning Wroe | The Good

A Terrible Kindness is sentimental to many a fault. In the Aberfan sections alone, its approach doesn’t seem out of place: the bereaved parents are true pictures of grief, and later, the words on their children’s graves have a plaintive naïveté. But away from there, in Cambridge or London, this Faber “lead debut” reads like average young-adult fare. What happened in the Welsh valleys that year is enraging, compelling, haunting – for a storyteller, the works. The great Aberfan novel, however, is apparently yet to come. The BBC Radio 2 Book Club announced on 24 January that its new home is on the Zoe Ball Breakfast Show. Planning to buy A Terrible Kindness for your group? Buy books from Hive or from Bookshop.org and support The Reading Agency and local bookshops at no extra cost to you.

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Following his late father into the family firm was an act of devastating rebellion against his mother’s ambitions for him and his singing gift.