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And this article by the author some six years ago gives an excellent introduction to the author’s research and her views that the embalmers were unsung heroes of the aftermath Martin Bond The author, Jo Browning Wroe. Her novel was inspired by her experiences growing up in a crematorium
Her book is steeped in a historical event: in the mid-60s, the Welsh Village of Aberfan suffered a landslide at a coal mine, killing 116 children and 28 adults. The village needed embalmers and William, with his newly minted embalmers designation, answers the call. What he witnesses there is so horrendous that he resolves never to have children of his own. It almost, but not quite, causes him to leave the love of his life, Gloria as well. In general I found William a difficult main character to warm to and some events difficult to wrap my head around. Some parts of the middle of the story I found boring and frustrating.For a while, as a chorister, William feels almost complete. Music plays a huge part in the novel, two pieces especially: Myfanwy, the haunting Welsh song of unrequited love, and Allegri’s sublime Miserere, the equivalent of Everest for treble choristers. Without giving the game away, they act as rich strands that interweave through William’s childhood and adult life. Well, I had good advice from both my agent and editor. There was an 18-month lag for me from when I signed, to when the book came out. So, the advice was to get on with the next one. Because if it comes out and it's hugely successful, that can make you think, “oh my gosh, I'll never do that again!” If it doesn't go so well, you'll think “Well, I can't do it.” So I've got a shaggy first version of the next one but I've got to do a lot of tidying up in the next few months before I hand it over!’
The book also made me want to find out more about Aberfan. My heart broke thinking of all those lives shattered. However this book isn’t just about that tragedy, huge parts of it focus on William’s earlier life as a chorister, which I found incredibly fascinating. William is a young, newly qualified embalmer, following in his father and uncle’s footsteps in the undertaking business, when the disaster in Aberfan happens. This book drew me in straightaway and I consumed it in a couple of days. The story is not a happy one as it begins with the Aberfan disaster and follows a young embalmer called William who volunteered to help identify and clean up the young children that lost their lives. We then hear the story of William’s life as to how he got to be an embalmer and then up to and after Aberfan and how that affected his life. The author has based her story on fact, wanting to highlight the unsung heroes of that terrible time, the embalmers who went to help out. The story is handled with compassion and what comes out of it other than how events can impact your future decisions is an overwhelming sense of hope and that things can get better. It’s a story written to be read and to linger with you after it is finished. It has lots to offer a book group with many discussion points and a wide appeal.”My congratulations and thanks to the author for her work, thanks too to the publishers Faber and Faber Ltd andNetgalley for the opportunity of reading this digital ARC in exchange for an honest review which it was my pleasure to provide.
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. 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. I was constantly surprised by how much I cared about the characters in A Terrible Kindness, even when they made difficult decisions.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. Mark asked, ‘William, as a 19-year-old, learns lots about embalming, and he becomes very, very good at it. It's a gruesome business though. How did you learn all that you needed to know about embalming in the 60s and 70s?’
I enjoyed the role of music in the book, as redemption for both William and Martin. As well as William’s gentle, caring nature, I also loved Martin’s cheeky character and the man he became. The novel really made me feel William’s pain both at losing his musical future and the PTSD he suffered after Aberfan. I admired the author’s gentle touch in dealing with William’s issues but did feel he was somewhat immature and stubborn in his relationships with his mother and his wife Gloria, while everyone around him seemed to be so tolerant and forgiving of his behaviour for so long. This is a very original book which has managed to bring together the diverse topics of the Aberfan disaster, the life of a boy chorister and embalming as a career choice and meld them into a delightful novel.
The Church Times Archive
James Meek is an award-winning British novelist and journalist. He is currently a contributing editor to the London Review of Books. His best-known book, published in more than 30 countries, is The People’s Act of Love. It was nominated for the Man Booker Prize and won both the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize and the Scottish Arts Council Award. The author was born in England, but grew up in Dundee and attended Edinburgh University. It was during his time as a student in the 1980s that he published his first collection of short stories. His memories swirl and gather, intertwine, and draw him to face a possible future upon which he believes only he can decide, but as he peers over the edge, it becomes clear that the ‘concrete feet’ of Aberfan are not the strongest grounding forces in his life. 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). Jo Browning Wroe grew up in a crematorium in Birmingham. She has an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia and is now Creative Writing Supervisor at Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge. A Terrible Kindness is her debut novel, which was shortlisted for the Bridport Peggy Chapman-Andrews award. She has two adult daughters and lives with her husband in Cambridge. A word from Jo Besides, brilliant unforgettable characters, the plot moves along at a good pace. I thought shifting between the past and present worked very well.
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