The Madness of Grief: A Memoir of Love and Loss

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Completely relatable to anyone who is grieving which I found really comforting. Puts beautifully into words what so many cannot voice or explain 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.

Whether it is pastoral care for the bereaved, discussions about the afterlife or being called out to perform the last rites, death is part of the Reverend Richard Coles' life and work. But when his partner, the Reverend David Coles, died, shortly before Christmas in 2019, much about death took Coles by surprise. For one thing, David's death at the early age of 43 was unexpected.

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Coles at the vicarage where he lives with his dachshunds Daisy and Pongo. Photograph: Fabio De Paola/The Guardian Heartbreakingly sad and searingly honest . . . For those who find themselves bereaved, this book is sure to help— DAILY MIRROR Coles' faith is, unsurprisingly for a vicar, central to his life and his understanding of the world. I found his attitude self-aware and unpushy - the best possible way to outline one's religion. Interestingly, however, the passages from the bible or other Christian tracts which moved him so deeply did nothing for me. I found Coles' own writing about his husband beautiful, and the poems he drew on affecting, but reading this book made me reflect on how cold religion leaves me. 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.”

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. Being a gay former pop star, who swears and admits to having taken drugs, has made him a modernising force in the Church of England just by virtue of being there. And to many, he represents the best of what the church can be. David left quite a wake behind him, and I wanted to feel it still. I found I couldn’t read, couldn’t watch telly, and couldn’t concentrate on anything. Then I began to sit in the garden as the weather improved, on a beanbag, and one day I saw flowers blossoming, the garden coming to life, and all of that was the result of David’s work. It was as though he was there. The importance of language is something Coles knows so well, and he says it always surprises him that in a society that prides itself on being so open-minded and liberated, so prepared to discuss anything and everything, we use euphemisms like “passed away” when it comes to death. “It’s a fate we all share, but we’re uneasy to share it. Aristocrats and Irish Roman Catholics handle death the best, the English middle class not so well. The language intimidates us, as though using it will put us in danger, and makes death more real.”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!) It was like tectonic plates were crashing all around me”, he says, while eating a chocolate digestive. (“Dark of course, why anybody would take milk chocolate when dark is available is beyond me.”) The police took the letters, assuring Coles that he had been the victim of a hate crime, although an investigation came to nothing.

Asked what David was like, Coles says his partner brought out the best in him. “I have to be right, and think things through, and work out my position,” says Coles. 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.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. Set in 1969, sixteen year old Jane is our central character. Her story - the loss of her mum at a young age, finding out more than she should about her fathers ‘unusual’ girlfriend and her own feelings for her friend Karl.