Good Grief

Returning from the memorial service, June Pepper, middle-aged widow of a tough tabloid editor cut down in his prime, sets about following her late husband’s instructions to keep a journal of her bereavement, as therapy.

But he did not say anything about writing it down. It is therefore in the form of a stream-of-consciousness monologue to the departed Sam the June records her reflections on her new status of widowhood.

She is to find that this business of grieving is not the straightforward process she had imagined. For one thing, day-to-day existence with all its little preoccupations persists in carrying on almost as usual. There are comings and goings and encounters – some of them unwelcome, such as the intrusion of a problem stepdaughter, Pauline; others more promising, like the relationship she forms with someone she dubs The Suit – a man she finds herself attracted towards because he is wearing one of her husband’s suits bought from Oxfam. There are shocks, too – skeletons in cupboards, unpleasant truths to come to terms with.

Imagining at first that the state of bereavement gently recedes over the months like a boat slowly disappearing across the horizon, June discovers that it is more in the nature of a shipwreck. Things will not stop happening. she is forced to re-think her marriage, her own life, her attitude to death itself. As she brings her journal to a close she is not at all sure that Sam has been wise in his advice. Neither are we.