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. 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. Examining masculinity and intimacy, love and loss, trauma and recovery, this story, seen through William’s eyes, is beautifully, insightfully, and respectfully told. Just because they’ve lost everything, doesn’t mean they’ve stopped being human . … Most of them have probably thought at some point, the world was a good place. The way I see it, singing about it keeps them in touch with who they were, are, could be. ..they might have lost everything, but no one can take their voices. 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.

Historically, on 21 October 1966, just after 9.15 a.m., waste tip number seven on the upper flank of Merthyr Vale colliery — loosened by two days of heavy rain — had slipped down the hillside. A 40-foot wall of debris hit Pantglas Junior School, burying its children and teachers, and killing 140. Mark ended the interview asking what’s next for Jo. ‘As your first book has gone so well, there will be demands immediately from your publisher for number two. When are we going to see that? What's next?’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. 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. My congratulations and thanks to the author for her work, thanks too to the publishers Faber and Faber Ltd andNetgalley for the opportunity of reading this digital ARC in exchange for an honest review which it was my pleasure to provide. Planning to buy A Terrible Kindness for your group? Buy books from Hive or from Bookshop.org and support The Reading Agency and local bookshops at no extra cost to you.

The characters in A Terrible Kindness demonstrate the complexity of human emotions and motivations. Special mention must go to the recurrent musical threads of Myfanwy and Allegri’s Miserere mei, Deus which are so elegantly woven that only a hard heart would be unmoved. How marvellous it is when a book broadens your horizons, takes you to places you would never envisage yourself going, and provides you with an enjoyable reading experience all at the same time. A Terrible Kindness by Jo Browning Wroe did all of that for me. Horizons were broadened when I learnt about the 1966 Aberfan tragedy which resulted in the deaths of 116 children and 28 adults. I'd never considered the life of a boy chorister boarding and training at Cambridge and I certainly never envisaged being taken into the world of an embalmer. Granted this was all via a work of fiction but it propelled me toward an evening of Googling and YouTubing once I'd finished the book. I truly appreciated listening to the magnificent sounds of various Cambridge choir renditions of Miserere and Myfanwy two songs regularly mentioned in the book. However all I've mentioned so far was the icing on the cake. The book itself was well written with interesting characters having to handle difficult situations and I was super impressed to learn this was a debut novel.

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It’s 1966 and the night of William Lavery’s graduation as an embalmer. Little does William know that in a few hours he will be volunteering his services at Aberfan in Wales, after a spoil tip collapses on top of the local primary school. Only nineteen years old, William is transformed by what he witnesses that cold, long night, and he makes a life-changing decision that will impact not only his future but the lives of everyone around him.

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: What was it about the make-up and purpose of the Midnight Choir in Cambridge that made it so central to William’s rehabilitation?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