A Terrible Kindness by Jo Browning Wroe

A Terrible Kindness is a debut novel that deals with some of the most sensitive subjects and somehow manages to make it all work. It begins at the time of the Aberfan disaster that took place in 1966, and a newly-qualified embalmer is called upon to help deal with the bodies of the children and bring them to a state where they can be identified by their desperate parents.

I was eight when the disaster happened, and I remember the shock of seeing the dreadful pictures on the news after a huge colliery spoil tip collapsed, and swept down the hillside engulfing the primary school and killing 116 local children and 28 adults. Even today, almost 60 years later, this remains a story that must be handled with the utmost care and I think Jo Browning Wroe achieves that.

The author grew up in a crematorium, so I suppose she absorbed the dignified etiquette of dealing with the dead and the bereaved, and bodies in her book are offered the kind of care you would expect for a close relative. She manages to give enough detail to convey the horror without dwelling too long on the physical injuries and the individual children involved.

The young embalmer at the centre of the story is William, who is one of the most angst-ridden young men you could ever hope to come across. He is a lovely person and he has the gift of the most wonderful singing voice, but at almost every turn in his life, William seems determined to deny himself any kind of happiness. His back-story involves the loss of his father at an early age and a scholarship to Cambridge Cathedral Choir School, so his future was looking bright, but a series of misunderstandings and emotional outbursts puts everything he has worked for on the line. Fortunately, William has enough going for him that I really wanted things to turn out in the end and I was glad that the story line included a couple of his nearest and dearest taking him to task for messing everything up.

It's a good read, and a great achievement for a debut, so something good to settle down with now that the nights are drawing in.

Comments

Violeta by Isabel Allende

Published: 2022, Bloomsbury Genre: Fiction Themes: South America, family relationships, business My rating (out of 5): ❤❤❤❤ If I ever tell my life story, I will take a leaf out of Violeta's book and make sure you understand that everybody loved me, and despite all sorts of questionable behaviour on my part, I leave the world as a winner. This is the story of a hundred year life. Violeta is approaching the end, but before she goes she is determined to write out her life story for someone she loves dearly. You don't get to know who that special someone is for most of the book, but that just serves to give the narrative a little twist. I didn't much like the character of Violeta but I understand that people who don't go round upsetting the apple cart don't make for very interesting stories. With such a great time span to play with, Isabel Allende had plenty of scope for changing Violeta's circumstances and adding in references to world events to keep the reader...

Holding by Graham Norton

Published: October 2016, Hodder and Stoughton Genre: fiction Themes: Ireland, crime, secrets, relationships, family My rating (out of 5): ❤❤❤ I went into the library looking for a book by Graham Norton as I keep seeing positive comments about his books on Twitter, and I felt I might be missing something. Holding seems to be his first book, and the library copy has a Radio 2 Book Club sticker on it, and I think it's fair to say that it's a perfect book for that reading group. It's a chatty style of writing that I could imagine would be how Graham would recount a tale if he was in conversation with someone, and there are sufficient strong elements to the plot-line to keep it interesting to the end. When I first started reading I thought it was going to be a bit thin on plot, as much of the story involved character descriptions, and I was starting to wonder how it was going to pull together. Then the dramatic events began to unfold and, once I could see how everyon...

The Wolf Den by Elodie Harper

Publisher: Head of Zeus, 2021 Genre: Fiction Themes: Ancient Pompeii, slaves, brothel My rating (out of 5): ❤❤❤❤ If, like me, you spent most of your history lessons looking out the window and didn't really absorb very much about the ancient Roman Empire, nil desperandum, as you will still manage perfectly well with this book. Set in first century Pompeii, the story follows the life of Amara, a young Greek woman who has been shipped to Pompeii as a slave and then bought by the owner of The Wolf Den brothel. As the daughter of a doctor, she was bought up in relatively comfortable circumstances, but a series of terrible events turned her life upside down and she is now trapped in an endless cycle of fear and degradation with almost no hope of escape. Amara is one of a group of slaves working in the Wolf Den, and they do what they can to protect one another from serious harm, but Amara knows that if she wants anything better for herself, she must make the brothel ow...

dittybox

Search This Blog