William is a complicated character whose life has been shaped by some difficult events, despite this, I found it hard to like William's character though. When it circled back to Aberfan at the end, it didn’t have the same emotional resonance for me as at the beginning of the story.

We meet him at an undertaker’s dinner, to which he’s finally had the courage to invite Gloria, the love of his life. The friendships, losses, relationships and family are the core of the story, but underneath it all is the experience that the character has in the first few chapters, and the scars that are carved into him; that of attending Aberfan in October 1966 as a freshly qualified embalmer. The truth is, however, that the book has very little to do with Aberfan and, instead, uses it as a dramatic backdrop for William to rethink his life and reminisce about his adolescence. As well as William’s gentle, caring nature, I also loved Martin’s cheeky character and the man he became.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. 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. Sentences such as “the roast pork … moved from William’s plate, to his mouth, to his stomach easily”, or “Ray’s baby is nestled inside her warm body”, sound like faltering translations, while the description “Aberfan is black, white or grey” will seem cursory to anyone who has seen images of the landslide. William is a very empathetic man, but, for me, his actions in the rest of the book seem rather over the top - maybe that's just me, but it became frustrating.

The more I think about it, the more I struggle to see any reason why Aberfan needed to be part of this story.Horizons were broadened when I learnt about the 1966 Aberfan tragedy which resulted in the deaths of 116 children and 28 adults.

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. He had known where his life was going before that night, but for the second time, outside events would send him on a different path. I would like to thank the author, publisher and NetGalley for giving me this book in exchange for a fair and honest review.Home to William Golding, Sylvia Plath, Kazuo Ishiguro, Sally Rooney, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Max Porter, Ingrid Persaud, Anna Burns and Rachel Cusk, among many others, Faber is proud to publish some of the greatest novelists from the early twentieth century to today. 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. 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. She is also really good at writing about music; the Welsh song Myfanwy and Allegri’s setting of the Miserere both have a very powerful part to play here and she conveys their power as well as any writing about music I have ever read, as well as the joy and transcendence which can come with performing.

A landslide has occurred in Aberfan and he is needed, as a newly qualified embalmer, to assist with the preparation of the deceased. While taking Gloria around Cambridge, William bumps into Martin again; he later embarks on a redemptive trip to Aberfan. I felt rifts were added between people in the family to keep the story interesting, but really the only purpose they served was to help everything to wrap up nicely by the end of the book.Framed around the tragedy of Aberfan, but not hugely about Aberfan, this felt a bit over complicated and clunky.