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July, 1992. On a narrow, twisting stretch of Carmarthenshire road, a cornering car loses control, hurtles out of its lane and crashes into a slower car travelling in the opposite direction. The driver of the fast car walks away. The innocent driver suffers a broken neck. A second earlier, he would have passed unharmed.
That motorist was Gareth Elwyn Jones, Professor of Education at University College Aberystwyth. Accident, written by his wife, depicts the impact of the disaster on the victim and his family. If it helps, she writes, in "furthering an understanding of disabled people and modify[ing] commonly-found attitudes of patronising kindness or simple dismissal" of themselves and their problems, she will be "more than happy".
Accident is in no danger of failing in these aims. It is an alternately grim and bracing account (I would say "moving", were the word not devalued by over-use) of the aftermath of disaster. Clinically, it is a story of deterioration, crisis, survival, limited gains. It is a story of doctors and nurses, some inspiring, one or two cruel. But above all it is the story of a family, and how the close-knit ties of husband, wife, daughter and son enable them to confront and cope with personal tragedy.
The readability of this book, despite its uncompromisingness, is enhanced by its quasi-novelistic structure. Nine chapters take us chronologically through the story of Gareth's hospital treatment and institutional rehabilitation (though both nouns deserve to be surrounded by inverted commas), and conclude with his discharge. Eight interleaved Interludes take us back or forward in time, and deal with events before and after this five-month process. Their presence brings contrast and some relief. But they also serve the book's double vision of hope and despair.
That double vision is most tellingly realised in the book's two endings. The last chapter closes with Gareth's discharge, and the energy of hope it releases. Yet this moment has already been pre-empted by the ending of the final Interlude, where Kath, ten years on from the accident, her pre-existing back problems aggravated by the demands of shifting her immobile husband about, anticipates a future that can only "get harder and bleaker".
Richard Poole
It is possible to use this review for promotional purposes, but the following acknowledgement should be included: A review from www.gwales.com, with the permission of the Welsh Books Council.
Gellir defnyddio’r adolygiad hwn at bwrpas hybu, ond gofynnir i chi gynnwys y gydnabyddiaeth ganlynol: Adolygiad oddi ar www.gwales.com, trwy ganiatâd Cyngor Llyfrau Cymru.
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Further Information: Accident
Katherine Jones
Two cars collided on an obscure road in Carmarthenshire, south-west Wales on 3 July 1992 at 5.15 p.m. The victim, Professor Emeritus Gareth Elwyn Jones in the history department at Swansea University was left paralysed. He faced months in hospital, together with the prospect of loss of career and lifestyle. This is the true account of the first months after the accident, told by his wife. Interspersed with this chronological account are interludes that try to put the momentous impact of permanent paralysis into perspective. Although this is a personal story, it is also the experience of the police, hospitals, doctors, nurses and fellow patients; it is the story of pain and progress, incredible support and occasional cruelty – which has a wider resonance.
Sales strengths
* The author is frank about her feelings and there is no self-pity or shallow sentiment in her heart-wrenching story.
* There is a widespread fascination with details of accidents, the process of recovery and rehabilitation.
* The ‘before and after’ situations show the catastrophic effects of such an event e.g. the way family holidays have to be transformed into carefully planned operations. This book deals with the hard reality of disability. |
