• About Me
  • Contact Me
  • Policies
  • Welcome

Novelhistorian

~ What's new and old in historical fiction

Novelhistorian

Tag Archives: morals

Dare Not Speak

19 Monday Jan 2015

Posted by Novelhistorian in Reviews and Columns

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

abusive parents, funeral director, honesty, marriage, morals, social pressure, Wales, Wendy Jones

Review: The Thoughts and Happenings of Wilfred Price, Purveyor of Superior Funerals, by Wendy Jones
Europa, 2014. 235 pp. $17

A young man, taught all his life to weigh his words, blurts out a fateful question at a picnic. Wilfred doesn’t mean to ask Grace to marry him–they hardly know each other–but he can’t say what he’s really thinking, which is wondering how she gets into and out of her yellow dress. But before Wilfred can retract his proposal, Grace runs off to tell her parents the happy news.

From this whimsical premise comes a funny, poignant, and painful novel, one that deepens as the characters grow. Wilfred thinks he should be able to reverse his gaffe–in fact, there’s another woman he prefers–and, under other circumstances, maybe he could. After all, it’s 1924, a modern age when such a misunderstanding shouldn’t condemn two young people clearly unsuited to one another. But it’s also a small village in Wales, where everyone has an opinion about everyone else’s business–and Wilfred’s business is burying people, a delicate occupation in which his moral reputation matters.

Countryside, Mid Wales. (Courtesy

Countryside, Mid Wales. (Brecon Beacons National Park; courtesy visitwales.com)

More to the point, Wilfred’s tenuous ability to speak up for himself vanishes under the first blush of confrontation, while poor Grace has even less aplomb. Neither stand a chance against her bullying parents, who force them to the registry office. Wilfred has nobody to intercede for him, because his mother died giving birth to him, whereas his father, a kindly, live-and-let-live type, lacks the fire to push back.

But Wilfred’s not the only one imprisoned. His fiancée, who has been less than forthright, is also trapped, a complication that both evens the score and sets up a serious reckoning. The Thoughts and Happenings of Wilfred Price becomes a moral tale about the costs of dishonesty and failure to take responsibility.

Jones renders all this in simple, lovely prose, and her metaphors spring naturally out of everyday tasks, so that you say, Of course. Consider Wilfred’s musing about being “unhappily married for eternity” while–when else?–he’s sanding the wood on a coffin:


Being unhappily married might feel a lot like the dread of doing hours of prep–mathematics prep–algebra and logarithms, inescapable problems with no obvious answer, no solution he could ever find, every day for the rest of his life.


With such artistry at Jones’s command, I’m surprised that Grace’s parents, Dr. and Mrs. Reece, come across like Hollywood types, overdrawn to the point of caricature. They’re emotionally abusive, so they’re a hundred percent unpleasant, each and every moment. They have only one concern, their standing in the community, but with one brief exception, Jones never shows them in it. The doctor, for instance, would have been far more believable had everybody thought what a wonderful man he was, a true servant of medicine, unaware that he makes his wife and daughter miserable.

I wonder whether the author thought she had to make the parents absolutely heartless to bring about a certain (and, I think, dubious) decision at the end. But I’m pretty sure Jones could have had gotten the result she wanted in another, subtler way.

Still, I recommend The Thoughts and Happenings of Wilfred Price, an impressive debut from a talented novelist.

Disclaimer: I borrowed my reading copy of this book from the public library.

Recent Posts

  • Lost Child: We Must Be Brave
  • Blackmail and Murder: Hot Time
  • Soft-Rock Sixties: Songs in Ursa Major
  • Parenting advice, World War I era
  • Love Triangle: If You Leave Me

Recent Comments

Novelhistorian on Stick-Figure Holocaust: While…
Francine Lerner on Stick-Figure Holocaust: While…
Novelhistorian on Trauma and Post-Trauma: Death…
Dee Andrews on Trauma and Post-Trauma: Death…
Trauma and Post-Trau… on A Very Odd Couple: Crooked…

Archives

  • August 2022
  • July 2022
  • June 2022
  • May 2022
  • April 2022
  • March 2022
  • February 2022
  • January 2022
  • December 2021
  • November 2021
  • October 2021
  • September 2021
  • August 2021
  • July 2021
  • June 2021
  • May 2021
  • April 2021
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014

Categories

  • Comment
  • Reviews and Columns
  • Uncategorized

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.com

Blogs I Follow

  • Roxana Arama
  • Damyanti Biswas
  • madame bibi lophile recommends
  • History Imagined: For Readers, Writers, & Lovers of Historical Fiction
  • Suzy Henderson
  • Flashlight Commentary
  • Diary of an Eccentric

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 170 other followers
Follow Novelhistorian on WordPress.com

Recent Posts

  • Lost Child: We Must Be Brave
  • Blackmail and Murder: Hot Time
  • Soft-Rock Sixties: Songs in Ursa Major
  • Parenting advice, World War I era
  • Love Triangle: If You Leave Me

Recent Comments

Novelhistorian on Stick-Figure Holocaust: While…
Francine Lerner on Stick-Figure Holocaust: While…
Novelhistorian on Trauma and Post-Trauma: Death…
Dee Andrews on Trauma and Post-Trauma: Death…
Trauma and Post-Trau… on A Very Odd Couple: Crooked…

Archives

  • August 2022
  • July 2022
  • June 2022
  • May 2022
  • April 2022
  • March 2022
  • February 2022
  • January 2022
  • December 2021
  • November 2021
  • October 2021
  • September 2021
  • August 2021
  • July 2021
  • June 2021
  • May 2021
  • April 2021
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014

Contents

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.com

Blog at WordPress.com.

Roxana Arama

storyteller from a foreign land

Damyanti Biswas

For lovers of reading, crime writing, crime fiction

madame bibi lophile recommends

Reading: it's personal

History Imagined: For Readers, Writers, & Lovers of Historical Fiction

Suzy Henderson

What's new and old in historical fiction

Flashlight Commentary

What's new and old in historical fiction

Diary of an Eccentric

writings of an eccentric bookworm

  • Follow Following
    • Novelhistorian
    • Join 170 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Novelhistorian
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...