Sad story about a family who lost a child whilst on holiday and just never spoke about it again

The author changes that by travelling to the site of the accident and tries to figure out what actually happened on that fateful day

When Richard Beard’s brother drowned aged 9, his family appeared to move on. But - forty years on - Richard tries to re-discover the brother he lost and the process he calls inquest and re-enactment is really about making sense of a trauma that was buried but shaped his whole family.
If you’re interested in memory, forgetting and the story of a family frozen in time by unspoken grief, this is for you.
As Richard pieces together facts and tells and re-tells stories, you’re left with the clear sense that there is no such thing as truth . And that actually the facts don’t matter - what’s important is how you carry on living.
At one point he says: ‘feel, damn you, feel something or forget’ and that sums up this book that is so much more than a memoir for me. He has to feel the pain of his loss to finally accept it.
If this sounds like new age hokum, that’s just me. This is actually a very grounded book but it works on many levels. Read it as a straight memoir or as a profound study of memory and forgetting and their part in trauma.
But do read it because it’s a deceptively simple story that says so much and will really make you feel.