The reader is carried along on the twists and turns of the inquest, from the basics (the date, the beach, the rental house) to Beard’s ineffectual research (he loses his map, interrupts during interviews) to the profound (the discovery of a lost story), so that the book is not only a memoir but a chronicle of how lost memories can be recovered. It is a memoir that reveals the mechanism of the form itself ... [Beard] puts forth definitions and psychological theories of repression and disassociation that may seem, at times, overdone, or heavy-handed — even if they later prove useful because they describe almost perfectly the remarkable story the author will discover about the days following Nicky’s death ... If the beginning is dense with theory and fact gathering, the later part of the book swells with meaning and revelation.
An excruciating read ... Beard’s book has all the required elements of a great memoir — a compelling story, deep introspection, fine writing and an unflinching quest for factual and emotional truth. This haunting book is a profoundly moving study of memory, denial and grief.
As much as an account of a death, this is a portrait of a family ... a touching, painful disquisition on memory and forgetting and the tendrils that tie us to the past. It is also a sad indictment of the private school culture still prevalent in the late 70s, which believed that only by squashing emotion could true character be formed ... a memorable addition to the growing collection of memoirs on loss and grief.
Plaintive, probing, and painfully honest, Beard’s reflective examination of loss and acceptance will bring beneficial insights to other grieving survivors.
This is not a sentimental book, which is always doled out as high praise when it comes to memoir, as though the worst sin for literary types would be to shed a tear from behind our rose-tinted spectacles. It’s an absorbing read, but by the end I was torn between wanting to reach into the pages and give the 11-year-old Richard a big cuddle, and finding the relentlessly forensic search for the raw feeling that the adult Beard thinks he has been denied a bit wearying ... I didn’t need him to shed buckets of tears, but I was longing for him to uncover a tiny well of tenderness or compassion, for himself and his parents. Really this is a study in repression, and I was left unsure how much the author realises it. Perhaps writing a memoir is no more effective a strategy for inner peace than denial.
This memoir breaks all the rules. It’s brimful of anger and guilt, fails to deliver an uplifting ending and opens with a death ... Beard has written an enriching rather than uplifting book. It deals in difficult truths.
Stunning ... [Beard's] beautifully written story is heartbreaking and unforgettable as he struggles with the grief he chose to forget and, now, attempts to remember again.
Meticulously crafted and searingly honest, Beard’s narrative is at once a story about the long and difficult road to self-forgiveness and a commentary on the wages of British emotional repression ... A quietly brooding and intense memoir of family and reckoning with the past.
