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

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This is the story of a man who has been profoundly affected by the death of his father and who, as a result, acts with extreme selfishness towards everyone in his life. This novel addresses some very difficult themes, but author Jo Browning Wroe, uses a deft touch and never strays into over-sentimentality.

I know one Puritan family in Wales who had thus stood steadfastly against having a television in their house, but whose resolve crumbled in the face of the availability of immediate, live coverage. But I do not feel the Aberfan disaster was essential to telling this story, which was about a young embalmer William.Has the passage of time made it acceptable to use the dead of Aberfan as a literary device that prompts a character to re-engage with the troubles of their childhood?

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. William rushed to Wales with a car load of embalming supplies and chid sized coffins to find not just dead bodies of little children, but bodies covered in slag that had to be cleaned first so parents could identify them.William’s mother, Evelyn, helpfully informs him, “There’s a madness that comes with grief”, and Martin is similarly educational: “You shut [music] out as if it was the thing that hurt you, when all along, it’s been the thing that can save you. 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. So we are aware that he has a difficult relationship with his mother, for example, but are unaware until later why this is.