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

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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 What was it about William and his experiences that made him such a good embalmer, and why was the activity so good for him? After the powerful beginning, we spend the rest of the book moving between William's past at boarding school and the present where something has happened to make him estranged from his mum. I did not find William's boarding school/choir boy adventures particularly interesting, so I was reading on only for the something that is teased throughout.

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. Aberfan is a story that Britain will, and should, find difficult to forget. A natural disaster, caused by official negligence, that took 116 children’s lives; photographs of the giant spoil-tip that swept through a Welsh primary school; schoolgirls praying on the ruins as men dug towards classmates entombed below. Following his late father into the family firm was an act of devastating rebellion against his mother’s ambitions for him and his singing gift. For the gentlest, most kindhearted person I know, you are extraordinarily good at making a pig’s ear of things.’..... And as his feet fix ever more firmly into that concrete, it is then that the true concepts of family and friendship make themselves known to him.

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The author's use of language to convey the psychological landscape of the characters was truly remarkable. 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. I think anyone above a certain ages in the UK will be familiar with Aberfan, as it was a disaster that was and still remains seared on the national conscience due to both the huge loss of life – including 116 young children and 28 adults – and the aftermath – in particular the refusal of the National Coal Board to accept their clear corporate culpability. I found the tension between the protagonist's actions and their moral implications to be captivating.

I don’t even know where to start with this review. I feel so emotional and afraid that I will never to able to praise this book enough. I was nine years old when the Aberfan disaster happened. It was one of those moments in time that no one could ever forget. So to conjure up that era just came naturally, how people dressed, talked and the taboos of that time. The book was selected with the help of a panel of library staff from across the UK. Our readers loved A Terrible Kindness – here are some of their comments: Embalming — the other main element in the novel — also carries spiritual and emotional heft. The author grew up in a crematorium, where death was familiar, but neither contemptible nor cheap. She brings to the narrative the significance of the intimate, personal relationship that takes place between the dead individual and the embalmer. Examining masculinity and intimacy, love and loss, trauma and recovery, this story, seen through William’s eyes, is beautifully, insightfully, and respectfully told. So, when things go wrong for him, when the flipside of those traits emerge, he finds himself in a safer place than he expects or recognises.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. 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. The restorative power of music is most clearly shown however when William revisits Cambridge to discover his friend is the organiser of a choir formed from the city’s homeless population. William challenges the idea of men who have nothing being asked to sing about love and loss but his friend’s belief is that these are exactly the sentiments the men should be able to voice: Listen to the author Jo Browning Wroe in conversation with Malcolm Doney in this week’s Church Times podcast. This is a new monthly series produced in association with the Church Times Festival of Faith and Literature. The festival will return as an in-person event at the University of Winchester and Winchester Cathedral next February, and Jo Browning Wroe will be one of the speakers. faithandliterature.hymnsam.co.uk A Terrible Kindness is a novel about grief and forgiveness; of misplaced love and decisions that have long-lasting consequences. It’s strong on setting and the portrayal of anguish. The scenes in Aberfan are handled particularly well; portraying the immensity of the task faced by the volunteer embalmers as they wrestled to maintain professionalism in the face of unbelievable tragedy.

The author’s interest in undertakers first came from her childhood where she lives in a crematorium (her father was a supervisor) and learnt to admire their respectful professionalism. With chapters short and neat, distinct life eras laid out as voices in a four-part harmony from childhood into adulthood, portraying joys and woes alike, and a coda which wraps it all up nicely, the book had me in one compelling, luxurious, eyes-at-high-tide sitting. Family plays a huge part in this story, the dynamics of relationships, love, death and acceptance. It has it all and with such powerful writing that every person feels real. Every event affected me. This story isn’t just memorable. It is unforgettable. It is perfection. It is there where you will connect with William, this tender, caring man, who will forever be changed, with the thing he sees. His gentle manner, his thoughtfulness and respect. He had known where his life was going before that night, but for the second time, outside events would send him on a different path.William gets his moment in the spotlight, but it is eclipsed by the handing of a telegram to the president, who reads it out: “Embalmers needed urgently at Aberfan. Bring equipment and coffins.”