What is the language of Grief? Does it even have a language of it’s own? It must be sad for sure and haunting and would bring back residue of memories that one decides not to touch. May be, that is grief – in its form – absolute and never-fading. At the same time, it does little to help conjure the strength to get to a point when it does not remain grief any more. I know I may not be making any sense right now – however to get my point, you have to read The Report by Jessica Francis Kane.
During the Blitz in London in 1943, an extraordinary event took place in Bethnal Green. On March 3, 1943, when air raid warning sirens went off, thousands of people, as usual headed to nearest bomb shelter, the local Tube Station that could shelter close to ten thousand people at one time. Some had come here many times and knew that they could reserve cots and places to sleep for the night. Others just took their chances, hoping that the emergency would not last long and that they would be able to return home soon afterward. On this night, something unique happened. One hundred seventy-three people died of asphyxia within a minute of their arrival, all suffocated in the crush on the first twenty stairs of the entrance. Ironically, “not a single bomb had fallen in the city that night.”
Author Jessica Francis Kane, who studied the original government inquiry into the reasons for this catastrophe, draws on the facts of the real Bethnal Green case to create a fictionalized version of what went wrong. The actual facts, gathered and put into a report by Sir Laurence Dunne within three weeks of the events, had been hushed up by the government so as not to alarm the people or create questions about the government’s ability to handle crises. Wanting to avoid placing blame on people who might become scapegoats, he had written his report with a concern for human feelings and for what humans need in order to deal with disasters during fraught times such as war. “Perhaps,” he suggests, “we should only sometimes be held accountable for the unintended consequences of our actions.”
At the same time Ms. Kane maintains the balance of why people behaved the way they did and forms thoughts to their actions. The characters elicit sympathy, and when all the details are known, the reader feels the same sorts of conflicts that Sir Laurence Dunne felt when he wrote his report.
She avoids the flights of sentimentality while writing the book and brings out the true character of people in a situation like this – what they do and how they become. She shows you the bigger picture of morality and issues at hand.
I commend Graywolf Press for publishing this book. It made for some captivating reading and most of all another view of looking at things – from not just one eye, just from beyond what is there to be seen.
Of Books and Reading 