The Day That Went Missing

*WINNER OF THE PEN ACKERLEY PRIZE 2018* My younger brother’s name is Nicholas Beard. He was nine years old, and I was with him in the water when he drowned. Life changes in an instant. On a family holiday in Cornwall in 1978, Richard and Nicholas are in the sea, jumping the waves. Suddenly and inexplicably Nicholas is out of his depth and then, shockingly, so is Richard. Only one of the brothers returns to the shore. Richard does not attend Nicholas’s funeral and afterwards the family return to Cornwall to continue the holiday. Soon they stop speaking of that day at the beach altogether. Years later, haunted by grief, Richard sets out to piece together the story. Who was Nicholas? What really happened that day? And why did the family never speak of it again? SHORTLISTED FOR THE RATHBONES FOLIO PRIZE 2018 SHORTLISTED FOR THE JAMES TAIT BLACK PRIZE 2018 ‘This captivating book, both heart-rending and jaw-dropping, unfolds like a detective story’ Daily Mail ‘A memoir of real truth and heartbreaking emotional heft’ Sunday Times

About the Author :
Richard Beard is the author of Acts of the Assassins which was shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize and most recently, The Day That Went Missing. In the twenty years since his first book he has published critically acclaimed novels and narrative non-fiction, including Becoming Drusilla, the story of how a friendship between two men was changed by a gender transition. He was formerly director of the National Academy of Writing in London, and is now a visiting professor at the University of Tokyo and has a Creative Writing Fellowship at the University of East Anglia. He is an optimistic opening batsman for the Authors Cricket Club.

Review :
A memoir of real truth and heartbreaking emotional heft This captivating book, both heart-rending and jaw-dropping, unfolds like a detective story A touching, painful disquisition on memory and forgetting and the tendrils that tie us to the past Clear-eyed, very sad, funny at times and, despite the story it tells, ultimately uplifting in its determination to confront buried truths. A masterpiece A devastating forage into memory and the brutality of the stiff upper lip What a wonderful book about tragedy, the tricks that memory plays on us all, and the bottomless capacity for denial that lies at the heart of a public school upbringing. I was quite undone by it - and also surprised, at times, by eruptions of laughter. For it proves, if proof is needed, that there's nothing stranger than a conventional English family A compelling autobiography showing the need to erase an early tragedy and the necessity, many years later, to discover what exactly happened. This is an unforgettable family story that explores human nature and involves us all I read nothing this year that I admired quite as much This is an absorbing, unsettling and at times painfully difficult read but by the end of the book it is clear that Richard found it cathartic to dig up the past. His story is an important examination of grief and denial and the huge damage caused by the idea that feelings and emotions are something best packed away and ignored