- The Report by Jessica Francis Kane
The novel is a fictional version of the events leading up to, and the inquiry into, the Bethnal Green Tube Station disaster which occurred on 3rd March 1943, when 173 people died.
The novel looks into the lives of some of the people involved in the disaster, focussing particularly on the Magistrate Laurence Dunne who was appointed to handle the inquiry, a local family who lost one of their children in the disaster, a Clerk working for the Council, one of the wardens whose job it was to maintain the shelter, and a local clergyman.
Most of the novel is set in 1943, dealing with the events immediately after the disaster (which is covered only briefly towards the start of the novel and in quite a subdued manner), and in the days following the tragedy. It is interspersed with an interview between a young reporter called Paul and the now very elderly Laurence Dunne, in 1973, in preparation for a television documentary retrospective on the 30th anniversary of the disaster.
I thought the author handled a very sensitive subject well - it is, after all, still well within living memory for many people. I particularly liked the way she gently unfolded the layers of the story through the different characters. Especially poignant were the scenes between Rev McNeely and the survivors, some of which made for uncomfortable reading, and not all with a good outcome.
All in all a very accomplished novel, and which has inspired me to find out more about this terrible tragedy.