A Taste of Blackberries

The first chapter of this book describes a close friendship between two boys in a nostalgic evocation of shared adventures and fleeting quarrels. Then, very unexpectedly, one of the boys is killed and the rest of the book is an account of how his companion reacts to the tragedy. He endures successive stages of grief; shocked disbelief, anger and then anguished realisation. At the end of the book, he begins to realise that the worst of the pain is over. Although there's a certain textbook neatness to the process described, this is perhaps necessary to convince the young reader that the catastrophe of bereavement is finite and survivable. An honest and engaging book which manages to be reassuring without being at all sentimental.