A Terrible Kindness: The Bestselling Richard and Judy Book Club Pick

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In 1966, a colliery spoil tip above the Welsh village of Aberfan collapsed; 116 children and 28 adults were killed when the village was buried under a wave of slurry. Jo Browning Wroe’s debut novel, A Terrible Kindness, purports to be the story of a young embalmer who attends the disaster. The first thing to say is that it resolutely isn’t: it is, in fact, the kind of novel I used to enjoy reading off my grandparents’ shelves, a domestic saga about a young man struggling to overcome his childhood while joining the family business. Five minutes later, when Dad and I left the house, the hearse was already sitting under the porte-cochere with two lustrous Daimlers behind it. I bent forward to look at the people emerging from the cars, like dark flowers unfolding in the sunshine. Another unspoken message I had imbibed: grief was more disturbing to witness than death itself – the hearse was, after all, one big flowery window display for the coffin, whereas mourners were hidden behind car windows of jet glass – and undertakers were a dignified, distinguished elite, who weren’t afraid to be close to these people whose grief somehow set them apart from the rest of us. Undertakers stood sentinel alongside the otherwise isolated mourners, quietly directing, guiding, assuring. William is a complicated character whose life has been shaped by some difficult events, despite this, I found it hard to like William's character though. I did understand what he had been through and loved his kindness at the beginning and I totally understood how the events affected him, however, his behaviour at other stages in his life did frustrate me. My favourite character was Martin, I loved his resilience and joy of life, his understanding and forgiveness; he was lovely.

A Terrible Kindness by Jo Browning Wroe — Scars Of Tragedy A Terrible Kindness by Jo Browning Wroe — Scars Of Tragedy

Examining masculinity and intimacy, love and loss, trauma and recovery, this story, seen through William’s eyes, is beautifully, insightfully, and respectfully told. Days later, with no sleep and only short breaks for crab paste sandwiches and whisky-laced tea, his life had changed utterly, in a way he could not have predicted. Unprepared for what he is to see and experience, William sets to work preparing the tiny bodies for their parents to identify. As he continues, with minimal breaks, the bodies brought to him are increasingly broken, and he and his fellow embalmers, along with some of the adult survivors, have a much harder job to enable identification without causing further distress to their families. At last, all the bodies are ready to be buried, but William is now also broken, both mentally and emotionally. He calls his fiancée to break off their engagement, knowing that she wants to start a family almost as soon as they are married, while he now feels that he could never bring a child into the world after all that he has seen. We had no neighbours, no nearby friends to play with. It wasn’t until I started infant school, three miles away, quite unprepared and astounded at the vast number of children in one place, that I began to learn how to mix with others. It was an undeniably lonely and isolated early childhood. But I appreciate, now, how much solitude was a key nutrient in my compost. There was nothing to do except watch everyone and everything closely, and develop an imaginative inner world. This constant attentiveness not only saved me from death by boredom, but gave me a keen eye for detail and a certain self-sufficiency. When a girl in my class was killed on a busy road and came to our crem, I felt a strange, fierce ownership of the tragedyApproaching Aberfan the day after the disaster, 19-year-old William Lavery, a newly qualified embalmer, felt exhilarated, excited even, that he was about to do a good thing. With skills gained (with distinction) from his recent training and from teenage years of apprenticeship in the family business, he believed he was perfectly prepared. William decides he must act, so he stands and volunteers to attend. It will be his first job as an embalmer, and it will be one he never forgets. The Welsh sage Betty tells William: “When we go through impossible things, someone, or something, will help us, if we let them.” Why is this so difficult a lesson for William to learn? A Terrible Kindness is ultimately a tale of humanity, showing how love and compassion endures even in the most difficult of situations. A Terrible Kindness by Jo Browning Wroe: Footnotes

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

I may have made the book sound a difficult read; in fact, it’s anything but. I was completely engrossed and always wanted to read just a bit more. Wroe’s prose (in the present tense) is poised and unobtrusively brilliant, I think, so that everything from the strongest emotions to the feel of Cambridge in the early 70s (and I was there, so I know) is excellently but quietly done.

Forthcoming Events

His work that night will force him to think about the little boy he was, and the losses he has worked so hard to forget. But compassion can have surprising consequences, because - as William discovers - giving so much to others can sometimes help us heal ourselves. 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. 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. The book is also I think about characters (in particular William and his mother) that try to simplify difficult and complex issues into their life into a single point of focus and resentment, and adopt a policy of avoidance as well as blame rather than forgiveness (of themselves and others). It is normal, I expect, that people focus on the bereaved, but Wroe, who ‘grew up in a crematorium in Birmingham’ has crafted her novel to depict the experience of one who dealt with this experience without the support of the community. William arrives at the scene after driving all night and is ushered into a makeshift embalming station lit by hurricane lamps because the electricity was cut. There he is briefed by an Irish embalmer who has also come to help.

A Terrible Kindness by Jo Browning Wroe: Prepare to shed

I absolutely adored this stunning book! It was only recently that I had even heard of the Aberfan tradegy, so when I read the blurb I was very intrigued to read this novel.

Gifts for Booklovers

Kindness, honesty and integrity are traits which run through William from a young age, and these characteristics attract similar souls. 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.”