Kadian Journal: A Father's Memoir

by Thomas Harding

Overview

In July 2012, Thomas Harding’s fourteen-year-old son Kadian was killed in a bicycle accident. Shortly afterwards Thomas began to write. This book is the result.

Beginning on the day of Kadian’s death, and continuing to the one-year anniversary, and beyond, Kadian Journal is a record of grief in its rawest form, and of a mind in shock and questioning a strange new reality. Interspersed within the journal are fragments of memory: jewel-bright everyday moments that slowly combine to form a biography of a lost son, and a lost life.

Kadian Journal is a document of startling bravery and candour—a description of a family dislocated and united by tragedy, and a beautiful and moving tribute to a son.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250065094
Publisher:	Picador
Publication date:	01/03/2017
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

THOMAS HARDING is an author and journalist who has written for the Financial Times, The Sunday Times, The Washington Post, and The Guardian, among other publications. He is the author of The House by the Lake (which was a shortlisted for the 2015 Costa Biography Award) and the #1 international bestselling book Hanns and Rudolf (which won the 2015 Jewish Quarterly-Wingate Prize, was shortlisted for the 2013 Costa Biography Award, and has been translated into many languages). He lives in Hampshire, England.

Editorial Reviews

10/24/2016
In a fitting tribute to the resilience of the family, Harding, a British journalist (The House by the Lake) who has written for several American publications, dissects one of the most horrible tragedies that can confront a household: the loss of a child. In July 2012, his oldest child, 14-year-old Kadian, was cycling with family and friends when he was fatally struck by a van. In alternating chapters of past and present, the grieving father draws in the reader with revealing views of his marriage, parenting, his two children, and the tough mourning process during Kadian’s funeral. Harding and his wife, Deb, share their secret moments, the overwhelming sadness, and the guilt, all rendered with a fresh boldness and candor. Following the shattering event, he realizes nothing will be the same again and all his loved ones are “broken,” but they must make peace with the untimely loss. Harding’s sensitive, intimate account eschews sentimental half-truths and sensational details for a purer, healing love that lifts his family above sadness and pain to become “free from the shackles of grief.” (Jan.) This review has been corrected. An earlier version mistakenly referred to Kadian as a "she."

Publishers Weekly

"This is a fine, brave book, a tough-minded, tender-hearted evocation of a beautiful boy, his all-too-short life and the impact of his death on a loving family. Harding has done his boy proud and turned nightmare into art.”—Doron Weber, The Washington Post

“What sets Kadian Journal apart from some other writing about grief is Harding's courage, keeping what he writes true to the experience he describes. He does not numb his pain or minimize embarrassment about the blind alleys he follows in trying to reassemble his life. The reader is right there, on the scene, however bitter or tender or gentle it may be, as if Harding is extending a guiding hand, one he could never again offer his lost child.”—The Buffalo News

"Both eloquent and heart-rending, Harding's book is not only a grieving father's testament of love to his dead son. It is also a reminder of the fragility of life and human relationships. An emotionally raw and uncompromising memoir.”—Kirkus Reviews

“A fitting tribute to the resilience of the family… In alternating chapters of past and present, the grieving father draws in the reader with revealing views of his marriage, parenting, his two children, and the tough mourning process during Kadian’s funeral. Harding and his wife, Deb, share their secret moments, the overwhelming sadness, and the guilt, all rendered with a fresh boldness and candor…. Harding’s sensitive, intimate account eschews sentimental half-truths and sensational details for a purer, healing love that lifts his family above sadness and pain to become ‘free from the shackles of grief.’”—Publishers Weekly

"Heartbreaking...Profoundly moving...A tender tribute.”—The Daily Mail (London)

"Harding's remarkable memoir is written with transparent emotional intelligence. It makes one understand how it was for a father to lose a boy unique in his eyes and loved by everyone who knew him: Kadian."—The Observer (London)

"Heartbreaking...For a man in such raw, intense pain, Harding writes with incredible precision....Kadian Harding’s fourteen years shine brilliantly from its pages....Thomas Harding has been generous in sharing his boy with me, and I am grateful he found words.”—The Daily Telegraph (London)

"This book is raw and heartbreaking but it is never intrusive or gratuitous. The writing is real and spare, the love so very deep that the reader can scarcely look away....A beautiful tribute.”—Sunday Express (London)

From the Publisher

2016-10-20
A British journalist and nonfiction writer's account of how he came to uneasy terms with the accidental death of his 14-year-old son.When Harding (The House by the Lake: One House, Five Families, and a Hundred Years of German History, 2016, etc.) lost his son, Kadian, on a cycling trip, the irony seemed too cruel. Twenty-five years before, he had met his wife and Kadian's mother while doing a charity bike ride across the United States. A dedicated journalist "too busy to be a father…too irresponsible," he had not wanted children; but when Kadian and, later, a younger daughter were born, he fell "totally in love." Harding remembers the death and too-brief life of his son, a "Prince Charming" of a boy who loved lizards, bicycles, and Apple electronics. He also offers a stark portrait of his own anguish. Time—along with the contented life he knew—seemed to end the moment his son died. Trying to make sense of the tragedy, Harding moves between past and present, joy and sorrow, to create a sense of the traumatic inner fracturing he experienced. Guilt further compounded his grief. Not only did he feel anger at his inability to shepherd his daughter and wife through loss. He also wrestled with the overwhelming sense that, in his role as family protector, he was to blame for his son's death. Bewildered and struggling to cope with PTSD, Harding searched for and found a word—kampu—used by a group of Australian Aborigines to describe the parent of a dead child. Sympathy from those around him as well as the work of memorializing Kadian helped gradually assuage the author's pain. Yet Harding realized a new truth—that his purpose would be "forever questioned, in doubt"—had come to define his "imperfect" life as a kampu. Both eloquent and heart-rending, Harding's book is not only a grieving father's testament of love to his dead son. It is also a reminder of the fragility of life and human relationships. An emotionally raw and uncompromising memoir.

Kirkus Reviews