The plot is simple, if circuitous. At the moment of a young girl’s tentative sexual awakening, a series of events reveals truths about her father, his lover, her aunt and the boy with whom she is enamored. The deceptions that have hidden many of these truths are mostly a reaction to the death of her mother, ten years earlier. But, as each façade is removed, the underlying reality becomes less certain and more mysterious, culminating in answers only in an epilogue-like chapter occurring fifteen years later. I’m a man and seeing so deeply into the experiences that a girl goes through growing up was eye opening. Seeing life from that perspective, the other side, was incredibly interesting and showed me how really we all want the same. I loved this book. It was so honest and the way Coles spoke about his life with David, it is like you could get to know him. It's the first time that Reverend Coles - who is vicar of St Mary the Virgin in Finedon, Northamptonshire - has revealed that it was caused by alcohol addiction. This is the second book I read of Panayotis Cacoyannis and I must declare myself her fan. In the first instance, I really like the imperfect construction of its characters that reveal a deep humanity in each of them. In this case, the protagonist, despite being a girl of sixteen, reveals an impressive maturity that feels very true and that makes us witnesses of her passage to the sexual maturity as she tells us the life and the personalities that conform her immediate social circle and how the death of her mother, an event of the past, influences them.

Captures brilliantly, beautifully, bravely the comedy as well as the tragedy of bereavement . . . simultaneously heartwarming and heartbreaking, painful and strangely comforting as it confronts the reality of what happens to us all in the end— THE TIMES He started jotting down impressions almost as soon as David died, he says, “writing out of the chaos, a little like a war correspondent – that’s how I felt, like I was standing on a street corner and there were bombs going off and I was writing down what was happening. It was a way of trying to endure it. Because something like this is almost unendurable. And you do what you have to do.” Like many in the UK, I like Richard Coles and know of him as a presenter of Saturday Live on Radio 4 every Saturday morning as well as having enjoyed his participation in Strictly Come Dancing a few years ago. Some may not realise that he is also a musician and was in the Communards in the 1980s with Jimmy Sommerville. He is a ‘national treasure’ or a ‘national trinket’ as we learn his partner David once commented. He is also a parish priest of a village parish in Northamptonshire. Frau Angela had married a philandering Smith, and then, when it dawned on her what he was up to, divorced him and proudly reverted to Schmidt. Frau Angela (who was now Dr. Schmidt) had then insisted on a hyphenated surname for their son, and Karl duly became a Schmidt-Smith."

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He lived with his partner David, who was also an ordained priest, until the latter’s death in December 2019. This book covers that short period of time between when it became obvious David was dying to his funeral in January 2020, with brief allusions to the following months. Richard Coles' civil partner, David, died in December 2019 due to complications arising from his alcoholism. Whilst Coles had grown accustomed to David's quirks and side-effects due to his illness, his death was sudden and unexpected. Covid, however, has led to people considering mortality in a way they’ve seldom done before, which makes the timing of Rev Richard Coles new book, The Madness of Grief: A Memoir of Love and Loss, extraordinarily appropriate. Yet timing, of course, can be a swine as well. The book is the result, a product, of the horribly early death of Richard’s partner David in December 2019. That’s true of course, but it doesn’t negate the book’s importance. Precisely, I’d argue, because those left behind in these cases need accounts of that first year, need to be accompanied rather than advised. What they soon realise is that, while there may be some mildly helpful devices and techniques available, there are no genuine cures and solutions. It bloody hurts, and it’ll continue to do so. Even for a priest, even for someone who has seen the horror before. Witnessing is one thing, participating quite another. Coles lost many friends during the HIV epidemic, including the gay activist Mark Ashton, who was portrayed in the 2014 film Pride. “Half the people you knew died,” he says. “They’d be dead in a week. It was just so traumatic. We were so young. I really still miss some of the people. Mark Ashton – what would he have become? So many men were in their 20s and 30s. God knows what they would have been. I just wish they hadn’t died.”

His reading is pitch-perfect . . . creating an aural kaleidoscope. It is, at heart, a meditation on the nature of loss and one that is as strangely comforting as it is wrenching and painful— Alex Clark, FINANCIAL TIMES, Audio Books review round up If you have read enough Cacoyannis, you will already suspect that all is not as it seems, and that there are secrets that have other secrets, and that the book is actually an onion. You know, layers, and layers, and every time you peel off a layer, your eyes tear up. Then there is the aching banality of what he calls the “sadmin”— the need to convey to the state, the authorities, everybody what to them is a necessary statistic but to the bereaved is a reminder of the intolerable, another cut in the wound that never completely heals. A perfect mix of intenseness and humour the writer is a truly funny women. Writing about what is often quite a dark subject the humour too is often dark or taboo but it is written so cleverly and with such finesse that I couldn’t help but be put into fits of laughter multiple times. There were parts of the book which almost broke me but do not be put off because the wit and warmth are wonderfully uplifting. As you would expect from surely one of the kindest people on earth, Richard Coles is a generous, thoughtful writer, who is as kind to his readers as he is to everyone.It is a compelling and movingly honest read. Obviously, Coles’ feelings are still very raw as he struggles to come to terms with the unexpected death of his partner who was a mere 42 years old. We understand at the beginning that the cause of death is a gastro-intestinal bleed and only learn much later that the root cause of this is alcohol. These people find themselves repeatedly faced with some life-changing and traumatic events, and the reader can't help but be pulled right into the tangled web of the narrative. (There are so many secrets!) Coles mentions a surgeon he met who’d worked in Syria and nearly broke down when the Queen asked him what it was like at the hospitals there. She saw his distress and invited him to give treats to her corgis to help him recover his composure. I recognized this scene from War Doctor – it happened to David Nott.) A bit rich coming from you, you may think, but Christianity does not offer you a palliative or an escape from this. On the contrary, it insists on the fact of death; without it, there’s no hope of a new life beyond that last horizon. For some that means Aunt Phyllis and the family spaniel bounding towards them across the springing meadows of eternity to greet them. For others, me included, it conjures no cast of best-loved characters, no misty shore, or flowery field, but something more like geometry.

Although not a self-help book, the homilies, experience and catharsis within creates invaluable solace. It will resonate for the myriad struggling with grief wrought by the pandemic— THE QUIETUS So often used to guiding others through their darkest moments, Reverend Coles found himself needing the help. In this memoir, Coles shares his truth, stays kind, and, when possible, brings a smile . . . By reflecting the hurts of others' losses with such beauty and integrity, he confirms that it is his open humanity that is priestly. It gives me yet another reason to admire him— CHURCH TIMES

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Add into the story that Richard has 5 dachshunds (I have one) and I just couldn't help drawing an affinity for his journey. I was ultimately left feeling very touched, and not quite alone. He says he never had any issue reconciling his faith and his sexuality – being gay was just “a variation on the universal theory of human sexuality” – and he has had nothing but support from his congregation and his C of E bosses (although some parishioners did leave Finedon when he was appointed vicar in 2011). The Church of England’s stance on LGBT equality, in particular same-sex marriage, has left Coles struggling to represent it at times, however. The epidemic brought Coles closer to God, in a similar way, he says, to the spike in the number of men who sought ordination after the second world war. He spent much of his youth as an atheist (even setting up an atheist society at school), but after the years of fame, drugs and grief, he consulted a psychiatrist, who suggested he see a priest. In the book, he takes care to capture as well many of the quieter, less dramatic, sillier moments that defined the experience for him. David’s insistence, when the paramedics wheeled him away, that Coles remember to bring his sewing, not his knitting, to the hospital. Those squeamishness selfies he took with Strictly fans in A&E (“Do us a twirl, Rev!”) and, later, the cheerless McDonald’s breakfasts and Costa coffees consumed while waiting on the ward. He had an incongruous conversation about, of all things, the Liverpool manager Jürgen Klopp with an administrator while he was registering David’s death. Coles laments the fact that he couldn’t marry David. The Church of England forbids same-sex marriage and doing so could have led to both men losing their bishop’s licence, which allowed them to work as priests – they planned to wait until they had retired. I've had to subtract David from the future. What am I going to do? Play the accordion and go to bed at 10 past six?Once out, however, things unravelled for him. “I had a mental crisis after I came out,” he says. “I think, for some time, I hadn’t been open about my sexuality and when I was, there was a release of inner tension, and that became a crisis.” We live in a time of grief. We always do of course, because suffering is a gruesome but inevitable aspect of the human condition. But this plague year has led to loss and anguish not known for generations in the west, and exposed and expanded much of the pain and loneliness that already existed. Most of us have some sort of experience of it, and as a cleric it’s hard to convey just how much biting, icy suffering is out there. Does being a vicar make it any easier to handle death? “Christianity doesn’t get you out of death,” says Coles. “It just says there’s something beyond it. But it doesn’t get you out of loss or grief, or bereavement. It doesn’t spare you any of that. On the contrary, I think it probably intensifies it.” Much about grief surprised him: the volume of 'sadmin' you have to do when someone dies, how much harder it is travelling for work alone, even the pain of typing a text message to your partner - then realising you are alone. A deeply personal account of life after grief will resonate, unforgettably, with anyone who has lost a loved one.