The Widow’s Tale - Mick Jackson

Not as morose as the title and cover might suggest, The Widow's Tale is actually a sprightly and often humorous account of dealing with loss, attempting to deal with the absurdity of the situation it leaves one in and the strange affect it has on how other people relate to the whole bereavement process. That's not to say that the novel is neglectful of the wave of deep feelings, the emotions, the sense of loss and complete dismantling of one's life that occurs, but at the same time it's understood that there's a necessity to deal with them and it's precisely the good old fashioned just-get-on-with-it manner with the widow in question here that drives and sets the tone of The Widow's Tale - even if in her case that means running away from it all after the unexpected death of her husband and sitting it out in a small rented cottage in a remote Norfolk village.

Noting her impressions down in the form of a journal, the observations here are wonderful - lightly and sometimes blackly humorous, the writing clear, precise and entertaining. Initially there doesn't appear to be much here in terms of novelistic depth, rigour or structuring, the first-person brief journal-entry point of view sections with their anecdotal impressions coming across a little like the observations of a regular columnist in a Sunday newspaper magazine Lifestyle supplement. The observations are keen however, seeing society and human relations from the fresh perspective of one whose world has been turned upside down, taking in other little quirky observations about human nature and getting old along the way, the whole absurdity of it all suddenly revealed.

As far as that goes, this is wonderfully enjoyable and entertaining writing, even if it is mostly somewhat episodic and anecdotal. Eventually however, through recollection of some other events in her life that have been revived by the loss of her husband, through her little quirks and obsessions, a more sympathetic and human side of our narrator arises out of her little journal notes and the seriousness of her condition becomes clear. The writing and the situations are related with an undeniable note of truth that it gets right to the heart of the character, of what bereavement means and how it is viewed in our society, allowing the reader to understand and sympathise with her - and undoubtedly many like her - in her predicament.

It's a slim account, deceptively light and readable and certainly possible to read it in one sitting, although to do so seems wasteful when you can have the delight of looking forward to reading some more. Once started however, the wonderfully engaging tone of The Widow's Tale doesn't make the option of putting the book down before the end an easy one.