A Terrible Kindness by Jo Browning Wroe is an instant Sunday Times bestseller. This powerful debut novel follows William Lavery, a young embalmer who volunteers after the Aberfan disaster, exploring how compassion helps heal deep wounds. This British literary fiction is perfect for readers seeking an emotionally profound story.
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.
Jo Browning Wroe grew up in a crematorium in Birmingham. She has an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia and teaches at the University of Cambridge Institute of Continuing Education on their Post Graduate Certificate in Teaching Creative Writing. Her debut novel, A Terrible Kindness, was a Sunday Times bestseller shortlisted for the Bridport Peggy Chapman-Andrews award, and longlisted for the Prix du Roman Fnac. She has two adult daughters and lives with her husband in Cambridge.
