This book featured in the 2022 version of the influential annual Observer Best Debut Novelist feature (past years have included Natasha Brown, Caleb Azumah Nelson, Douglas Stuart, Sally Rooney and Gail Honeyman among many others) and was also picked out by the New Statesman (and others) as one of the most anticipated debuts of 2022. Although the Aberfan tradegy is just horrendous, this book used it as its back drop for telling an impressively uplifting story of what happens to William when he begins to deal with the consequences of his involvement in what happened. In fact, William is a very talented choirist, trained at one of the best schools in Cambridge, and singled out to sing the most prestigious solo there. 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. He’s just nineteen and has a bright future with Lavery and Sons, the business run by his uncle Robert, and he’s come top of his class in embalming.

It only tells me you know the rest of your novel is not as strong as those banging opening chapters. For those familiar or unfamiliar – this documentary I found extremely moving, very well made and also very pertinent to the novel. Throughout the story I regularly thought of William as a kind hearted and genuinely good boy who developed into a man with these same traits.I was drawn into William’s world right from the first page, just as I was drawn into the honest beauty of Jo Browning Wroe’s writing.

I did not find William's boarding school/choir boy adventures particularly interesting, so I was reading on only for the something that is teased throughout. A fair chunk of the book is preoccupied with the homophobia of the period, which is well drawn, but presented without comment, so that for sustained periods the reader is simply wading through pages of anti-gay prejudice; a strangely dated experience. From Nobel Laureates Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter to theatre greats Tom Stoppard and Alan Bennett to rising stars Polly Stenham and Florian Zeller, Faber Drama presents the very best theatre has to offer. And to add another coincidence I spent four years at Cambridge – as a mathematician not a chorister (!I did understand what he had been through and loved his kindness at the beginning and I totally understood how the events affected him, however, his behaviour at other stages in his life did frustrate me. So we are aware that he has a difficult relationship with his mother, for example, but are unaware until later why this is. Already scarred by the early loss of his father, a difficult relationship with his mother and a devastating event in his teens, William feels most comfortable with the dead, but through the patience and kindness of those who love him, perhaps he can let go of the past and embrace life. This was a story strong on friendship and family - albeit ones with issues which were sometimes left to fester.

As a reading experience, I felt I disengaged a little – you can get a little frustrated with William – and the story lags a little.Similarly, his treatment of Gloria – which he blames on Aberfan – seems to trivialize the real tragedy there (parents losing their children) as William commandeers it to justify his own loss of innocence.

Most will know the blurb about this one: It’s October 1966 and William Lavery is interrupted at a black tie do with news of a tragedy. This disaster is still raw for both the country and the families affected by such a horrendous disaster.In the final third of the book a series of set piece scenes and important conversations cause William to come to terms with the hurt in his life, his anger and guilt and to start to forgive himself and others and seek to repair and heal his various broken relationships. William and others help prepare the bodies for burial, but the experience leaves him traumatised and determined never to become a parent, for fear of facing the same loss. For anyone not familiar, an avalanche of coal waste on a rain soaked mountain engulfed a town and primary school in Aberfan, Wales in 1966, killing 144 people, the vast majority of whom were young children.