The Thoughts and Happenings of Wilfred Price ...

 

    The Thoughts & Happenings of Wilfred Price, Purveyor of Superior Funerals by Wendy Jones may win the prize for longest, most quirky title of the year, but in contrast the novel itself has a quiet grace and charm and simplicity about it, and I found that very appealing.

    It begins in the Spring of 1924 with a picnic in a garden, a young woman in a fetching dress the colour of lemon curd, and a young man, carried away by the emotion of the moment, who asks her to marry him. Grace Reece is the daughter of the local doctor, Wilfred Price is an undertaker, and news of their betrothal will soon fly round the Pembrokeshire village of Narberth. But just as quickly, Wilfred realises he has acted impulsively, he doesn't love Grace and is now intent on dis-engaging himself; Grace, however, has a secret of her own.

    The book's epigraph is from The Mabinogion, the eleventh century Welsh epic:

"And he saw a tall tree by the side of the river, one half of which was on fire, from the root to the top, and the other half was green and in full leaf",

and that passage is relevant to Grace and her situation, and though I won't dwell on it here, therein lies the story's dark side, but it is handled very effectively in terms of weighting and balance between the slightly whimsical elements on the one hand and the much more serious ones on the other.

    The lighter side of the book is amusing and charming as we see Wilfred "lost in the maze of his own life", in love with the wrong woman, trying to make sense of a complicated situation. "Wilfred didn't know what marriage involved. Because his father was widowed, Wilfred had had no insight into the day-to-day goings-on of marriage, hadn't grown up enveloped in one. He imagined the worst ones were like Punch and Judy's marriage. He'd seen the puppet show once on the annual Bethesda Chapel Sunday School outing to Saundersfoot - the man hit the woman, the woman nagged the man, and they lived with an alligator. That was no good at all ...".

    Things will resolve themselves in time, but not so definitively that there isn't room for a sequel - due next year - which is good news. There's a delicacy about the book that suits its themes of reticence and what is hidden and unspoken, and there's a lightness to the telling, as unforced as its period setting, so all told, a lovely debut from Wendy Jones.

Comments

[LizF]

This sounds delightful and has gone on my list, as has the new Anne Tyler, the Juliet Nicolson about the Abdication (especially for my 18 year old who was taught nothing about it despite doing GCSE Modern History!)and the William Boyd - although at my current rate of reading and the size of my TBR mountain range, I should get to them by about 2020!

[Cornflower]

I'm enjoying the new Anne Tyler - though not far in yet - and looking forward to Abdication.
I read four books in quick succession last week, and it was The Thoughts and Happenings of Wilfred Price which stood out in that batch.