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

It is generally agreed that the Grateful Dead's late-'70s studio releases left even the most enthusiastic Deadheads longing for something more. The theory is that the band's momentum is best experienced during the ebb and flow of a live performance rather than the somewhat clinical tedium of a recording studio. Terrapin Station marks several milestones for the Grateful Dead: it was the band's first studio album in two years, as well as their return to a major label -- in this case Arista Records. More significant however is the use of an outside (read: non-Grateful Dead) producer. This was only the second time in which the Dead did not seize complete control. And the first time in a decade that they would relinquish their production reigns. They chose Keith Olsen -- a former member of the '60s garage rock band Music Machine -- whose production roster also included other Bay Area notables including the Sons of Champlin and Santana. Musically, Terrapin Station offers a few choice glimpses of the band doing what it does best. While the most prominent example is the album's extended title suite, there are a few others such as the cover of the Rev. Gary Davis gospel-blues "Samson and Delilah" and a resurrection of the Martha & the Vandellas hit "Dancin' in the Streets." The latter tune was originally performed by {|the Dead|} in their mid-'60s repertoire. What was once a {|garage rock|} and {|psychedelic|} reading has evolved into a 4/4-time, brass-influenced {|disco|} arrangement. Luckily, their extended versions during concert performances were infinitely more tolerable. Parties interested in examining the contrast between the studio and live performance versions of {|Terrapin Station|} material should seek the archival concert release {|Dick's Picks, Vol. 3|}. This two-disc set not only captures the band exactly two months and two days prior to the release of {|Terrapin Station|}, it also features stellar performances of every track from the album sans the up-tempo rocker {|"Passenger."|} ~ Lindsay Planer

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