The Boston Globe: "Wendy Jones’s life-embracing novel... sometimes skates too close to twee, but it’s also more serious than it appears. Vital information goes unspoken, and at a terrible cost."
Date: Mar 18 2014
THE THOUGHTS AND HAPPENINGS OF WILFRED PRICE, PURVEYOR OF SUPERIOR FUNERALS
By Wendy Jones
Europa Editions, 272 pp., paperback, $17
In 1924 in Narberth, Wales, population 300, undertaker Wilfred Price is something of a catch: young, handsome, and devoted to his widowed da, the town gravedigger. As Wilfred preps their bodies for burial, he chats companionably with the deceased.
Less smooth with live women, he blurts an inadvertent marriage proposal to pretty Grace, tries to undo it, then falls for lovely Flora when her father dies.
Wendy Jones’s life-embracing novel, “THE THOUGHTS AND HAPPENINGS OF WILFRED PRICE, PURVEYOR OF SUPERIOR FUNERALS,’’ sometimes skates too close to twee, but it’s also more serious than it appears. Vital information goes unspoken, and at a terrible cost.
