Claire Throssell Audiobooks

For My Boys: a memoir of loss and the campaigning that followed

1 audiobook reviewed

★ 4.7/5 average

207 listener ratings

Who is Claire Throssell?

Two impulses produce memoirs. One is having something to say. The other is refusing to let something go unsaid. For My Boys belongs unmistakably to the second.

Our catalogue places Claire Throssell at the meeting point of memoir and public life, and that combination describes the book precisely. It is a personal account of devastating loss, and it is also a work with a purpose beyond the telling, concerned with the campaigning that grows out of grief when a private catastrophe turns out to have public causes.

Writing of this kind asks something of a listener and deserves to be approached on its own terms. It is not a misery memoir and should not be shelved as one. The register, judging by everything around it, is steady rather than sensational.

Claire Throssell in audiobooks

For My Boys is scheduled for our shelves rather than sitting on them, so this entry stands as a marker ahead of arrival.

Kate Walsh narrates, and that is a considered choice for material this raw. A skilled reader can hold a difficult account steady in a way that is kinder to the listener than an unpractised voice would be, without softening any of what is being said.

Strong listener scores are already attached to it, and nine hours feels like the right length: enough for a full account, not so long that it becomes an ordeal. When it lands, approach it with the time and attention it asks for. What is available now is gathered below.