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

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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. The characters were well developed and realistic. William could be frustrating at times, especially with the way he treated Gloria and his mother, but you begin to understand why he makes the choices he does when you read more about his past. What I have been so heartened by is how people have been hugely encouraged to see me finally get there, it gives them a lot of hope, which is a great thing. There is no guarantee that you will be published — that is the hard thing — but you definitely won’t be published if you don’t try. If you like to write, just do it, just throw yourself into it.” I didn’t fully buy into the premise of the book about the source of William’s inability to deal with his emotions. The narrative puts it down to one event that occurred when he was about 14 years. Certainly it would have been a distressing incident for a young, impressionable boy but it didn’t seem realistic to me that it was so traumatic that it caused him to stop singing entirely.

There is much to love about this book, which draws you in and moves you along. But too often, just when Ms. Wroe needs to take her theme just a little bit further, she cops out. Homophobia is rampant in the 1960s and it is evident that this must be the main reason why Evelyn (William’s mother) dislikes Robert and Howard and is afraid of their influence on her son. Yet the reason given is that Evelyn can’t bear to see her dead husband’s identical twin be “happy in love” when she has been deprived. I don’t buy it. I think the reason is far darker. It’s utterly magnificent and had to pull car over twice to cry. Intricate cobweb of love, family and friendship, so delicately wrought. Beautiful. A masterclass in character.’ VERONICA HENRY I was constantly surprised by how much I cared about the characters in A Terrible Kindness, even when they made difficult decisions. 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. 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:

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In the opening chapters of A Terrible Kindness, they dutifully arrive with embalming fluid, technical paraphernalia, and tiny coffins, travelling through the night from all over the UK to ‘take care of the dead’ with the sombre focus of their profession. I would recommend this book to all - although it is historical fiction I believe it would suit those who prefer a more contemporary read too. Kindness, honesty and integrity are traits which run through William from a young age, and these characteristics attract similar souls. 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. 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.

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. My sister climbed into the incinerator once. Her trousers were never the same again.’ Photograph: Sebastian Nevols/The Guardian What we discover is a tale of a childhood blighted by the death of his father when he was eight years old. William’s mother is determined that her son will not get caught up in the family’s undertaking business but instead will pursue a career in music. But her plans are thrown into chaos and the relationship with Williams is destroyed because she cannot overcome her jealousy over the boy’s relationship with two other people, her dead husband’s twin brother Robert and Robert’s partner Howard. How then, after four years as a lauded Cambridge chorister, did his career path change so radically? How could he be estranged from his beloved mother and not have sung a single note in five years? Supporting these are friends and family whose patience, acceptance, devotion and love may be unremarked upon but is ever-present. 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.With much of the story focused on William's time as a chorister at Cambridge, his relationship with his mother, Martin and Gloria, I don't see why this is marketed as "The Aberfan book" other than to just sell more copies. Which makes me feel uncomfortable. The Aberfan passages, opening and closing the book, let the tragedy speak for itself: more reportage than invention, they have a hushed effectiveness. The rest of the novel is meagre stuff. Much of it turns on William’s boyhood as a Cambridge chorister, and a mysterious traumatic event. The set-up is familiar, the dialogue is flat and the characters are clichéd. We go from Charles, who arrives at school in a Rolls-Royce and bullies the poorer kids, to Gloria, whose entire personality is “sweetheart”, and whose dreadful treatment by William can only shake, never break, her love. Mark was interested to know more about how Jo found writing this novel, based on a true event. ‘You’re writing about such an emotive event that still casts such a long shadow over Wales and the nation. Describe how you felt about writing about it when you yourself, were not there?’ I would not be surprised to see it in a number of prize lists this year – particularly perhaps the Costa, as it is a memorable, emotionally impactful as well as ultimately uplifting read. For those familiar or unfamiliar – this documentary I found extremely moving, very well made and also very pertinent to the novel.