A Terrible Kindness

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A Terrible Kindness

By: Jo Browning Wroe

Narrated by: David Dawson

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When we go through something impossible, someone, or something, will help us, if we let them . . .

It is October 1966 and William Lavery is having the night of his life at his first black-tie do. But, as the evening unfolds, news hits of a landslide at a coal mine. It has buried a school: Aberfan. 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. 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.

Biography: 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. Her debut novel, A Terrible Kindness, was shortlisted for the Bridport Peggy Chapman-Andrews award. She has two adult daughters and lives with her husband in Cambridge.

Jo Browning WroeDavid DawsonFaber & Faber

Coming of Age

Fiction

Genre Fiction

Historical

Historical Fiction

Literary Fiction

Romance

Tear-jerking

Heartfelt

Coming of Age Fiction Genre Fiction Historical Historical Fiction Literary Fiction Romance Tear-jerking Heartfelt

Critic reviews

"It's a long time since I've read a debut novel that moved me so much." (Rachel Joyce)

"Extraordinary." (Sophie Hannah)

"A brave and tender novel." (Joanna Glen)

Most relevant

The story opens with William Lavery, a young embalmer who has recently joined the family business, responding to an urgent call for volunteers to go to Aberfan to help in the immediate aftermath of the colliery disaster. Jo Browning Wroe evokes the horror of working on the bodies with deft understatement, never graphic, yet leaving no mystery as to its grim essence. Despite advice from an experienced fellow embalmer to "keep your head down and your heart hard", William cannot help but be deeply affected by all he has witnessed and done: "Aberfan has scooped out the core of him, stretched it thin, and catapulted it into the wild blue yonder."

From there, the book plunges into the past, showing us William as a boy chorister in Cambridge, and the genesis of his friendship with Martin. We see the conflicting pulls of his love of singing and the call of his family trade, and his blossoming romance with Gloria.

Everyone comes into difficult situations with unique emotional baggage, and William is no exception. As time spools forward past the tragedy of Aberfan, the latter continues to exert outsize influence over him. To discuss the plot in greater detail would be to veer too far into spoiler territory, but safe to say that the ending ties up many strands of William's life in a deeply satisfying way.

Normally, I absorb audiobooks in 90-minute installments on my daily 10K (steps!) walk. However, I ended up taking greedy bonus gulps of A Terrible Kindness, sitting on my livingroom sofa, eager to find out out what would happen to William next.