It’s 1966 and life is looking hopeful for William Lavery; he has just completed his training to become an embalmer, is falling in love and celebrating his new career with his loving Uncle. All looks bright, until news breaks of a terrible tragedy. Embalmers are needed urgently to help with a disaster in a Welsh mining village, where dozens of children have been killed. William immediately volunteers. What he does and sees that evening will change his entire outlook on life, affecting his future and forcing him to finally face up to issues in his past.
The Aberfan disaster – a tragedy in which 116 children and 28 adults were killed by a coal tip which slipped down the hillside and buried a village school – is a difficult and heart-breaking story to tell. But in her debut novel, Jo Browning Wroe, handles it with grace, kindness and a heart-warming tenderness.
I can’t deny that, while I had been told by many that I would love this book, I was apprehensive about the subject matter. I needn’t have been. This is so much more than a book about a disaster. The narrative focuses around William, weaving between that fateful night, the future which is so affected by what he sees, and his childhood. Faced with such raw grief and loss, William begins to reflect on the loss of his own father years before and how that shaped his family and life, for better and for worse.
One interesting plot strand is William’s time as a chorister in Cambridge. This is a world about which I knew literally nothing, but was one of the most wonderful and unexpectedly funny storylines I have ever read. The beautifully drawn relationship with his best friend Martin is a joy to read, and the emotional investment William has with the music had me calling on Alexa to play The Miserere as I read.
'A Terrible Kindness' is driven by its characters and their relationships. Each one – from William’s struggle to accept his love for Gloria to the wonderful relationship between William's Uncle Robert and his ‘friend’ Howard – makes you feel like part of the story.
Most of all, this is a novel about the strength of the human spirit. In one of the final scenes, William finds himself back in Aberfan and remembering how he found solace in his music at the hardest of times. I can’t say more because I don’t want to spoil it, but I read those final chapters with tears streaming down my face, filled with hope at the beauty of human connection.
As if my pleasure in reading this novel wasn’t enough, I was lucky enough to meet and talk to the author through my wonderful book group (Appetite Book Group in Colchester). She is as engaging as her novel and it was fascinating to hear how much research and thought had gone into tackling such a difficult subject.
This novel has already received so much praise and interest, and rightly so. If you haven’t read it already, I suggest you do so now and make sure you have a stack of tissues ready to mop up those tears.
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