Richard & Judy Introduce A Terrible Kindness by Jo Browning Wroe

One disaster at or in a school swiftly overtakes another. A school fire. A school shooting. However shocking and horrendous, such dreadful events tend to blur into each other. But not Aberfan. The abrupt engulfing of a Welsh mining village school under a tide of liquid black filth back in the 1960s endures as a particular piece of ghastly British heritage. Incredibly, in A Terrible Kindness, Jo Browning Wroe turns this appalling incident into a sort of tenderness. Quite an achievement.

Richard's Review:

I remember the Aberfan Disaster as my first introduction into the bleak awfulness of fate and happenstance. It was, in the relatively new media age of the 1960s, one of the first tragedies to unfold directly, hour by hour, into people’s living rooms. 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.

The very name or word ‘Aberfan’ became synonymous with horror and trauma. People were repelled and fascinated in equal measure. 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. It is an extraordinary reading experience. We can’t recommend this book more highly.

Judy's Review:

Just hours after the multiple waves of black sludge engulf Aberfan’s primary school, 19-year-old William Lavery is enjoying his first proper grown-up night out. He’s a freshly-qualified embalmer – a preserver of the bodies of the recently departed – and is in full evening dress at the Institute of Embalmers’ Ladies Night Dinner Dance. The beautiful, sequinned-dressed Gloria is his date. He can hardly believe his luck. Then, just as things are turning interesting, a telegram arrives. The tragedy in Aberfan has killed so many children that an army of embalmers is required, at once.

William answers the call. It will turn out to be the most significant, life-changing few days of his life. And what of Gloria? Can he possibly come home and pick up where he left off that night? Beautiful, haunting writing; you will have your breath taken away by this book.