In the opening lines of this story, Josephine Hart takes us to a place that, for most of us, has hitherto been both unimagined and unimaginable. It’s a literary punch in the solar plexus, a nightmarish, life-changing moment. In the faltering, flickering consciousness of a dying child she des- cribes, in a few simple but powerful words, one small but excruciating act of love.
The shock of this tragedy - a young lad killed by his own curiosity - seeps slowly through the pages of this book like molasses, binding the protagonists in its sticky wake and hindering their progress through the rest of life. The family’s natural love for the lost boy now becomes their greatest source of pain, intensified by every memory, every