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

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So all we’re left with, my precious son, is whether we can forgive, be forgiven, and keep trying our best. She is also really good at writing about music; the Welsh song Myfanwy and Allegri’s setting of the Miserere both have a very powerful part to play here and she conveys their power as well as any writing about music I have ever read, as well as the joy and transcendence which can come with performing. How marvellous it is when a book broadens your horizons, takes you to places you would never envisage yourself going, and provides you with an enjoyable reading experience all at the same time. I would like to thank the author, publisher and NetGalley for giving me this book in exchange for a fair and honest review.

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 story of William Lavery - from chorister to embalmer, son to husband - is almost fantastical but also sincerely realistic. I was attracted to this book because of my Welsh genes, and my Welsh grandparents living fairly near to the village in which this tragedy occurred. But compassion can have surprising consequences, because – as William discovers – giving so much to others can sometimes help us heal ourselves. As an aside I initially felt this was an authorial misstep to withold the information about what happened in the incident from the reader when it is known to all of the book’s characters even those not there like William’s later wife Gloria (the daughter of another undertaking/embalming dynasty) – but I think this is so that we can first of all understand its consequences and judge for ourselves if it fits the incident (which while not doubt hugely mortifying should not have lead to a lifetime of damage).Exactly what his father had wanted for him was never stated before his premature death when William was just eight. Jo Browning Wroe’s remarkable novel based on that awful Welsh morning is a tender yet brutal remembrance on which a young romance somehow flowers. Most knew of it from a mention in The Crown on Netflix, and many went off to read more about it before beginning the novel. It's the Midlands Chapter of the Institute of Embalmers Ladies' Night Dinner Dance, and William is taking Gloria in her sequined evening gown. I felt it was sensitively and respectfully done - but it happened before I was born and was not something I remember hearing about growing up.

Faber Members get access to live and online author events and receive regular e-newsletters with book previews, promotional offers, articles and quizzes. Incredibly, in A Terrible Kindness, Jo Browning Wroe turns this appalling incident into a sort of tenderness. I really felt I was accompanying him on his journey as he worked through his conflicting and difficult emotions. This, combined with a fractious relationship with his mother, impacts greatly on William’s personal life and holds him back in relationships. This is by no means a bad book and I feel I am in the minority here as a lot of people have raved about it, even named it their book of 2022!It is there where you will connect with William, this tender, caring man, who will forever be changed, with the thing he sees. Eyes may well up and throats may clog with emotion in later scenes: only the hard of heard will fail to be moved and uplifted by this exceptional debut novel. Throughout the story I regularly thought of William as a kind hearted and genuinely good boy who developed into a man with these same traits.

So all we’re left with, my precious son, is whether we can forgive, be forgiven and keep trying our best. Homosexuality couldn’t come out of the closet in 1966 and it’s a lingering awkwardness between Evelyn and Robert. However, his musical career came to an abrupt and traumatic end, causing William to sever ties with his best friend Martin as well as with his mother, Evelyn and to later train as an embalmer and join Robert and Howard in the family business he has come to love.For William’s mother – after the early death of her beloved embalmer husband – she focuses her mourning on hostility to her husband’s identical twin brother Robert and his partner (in both business and life) Howard, openly resenting the way in which Robert reminds her of her husband, how Robert and Howard seem to her to flaunt their togetherness in contrast to her own solitude and most of all the close relationship with William which excludes her (and seems to have taken over from a similarly close bond between them and her husband) and which she fears might suck William into the family business (something which becomes a greater issue for her after his nascent musical abilities are uncovered). It wasn't so much about the Aberfan disaster as about the effects of PTSD on those who are involved in recovering bodies after such disasters. William is such a complicated character and the relationships he has, with his friends, his family and just about everyone else he meets are so layered and complex that it takes forever to unravel them all.

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