About A Son by David Whitehouse
David Whitehouse's new book, building on Colin Hehir's diaries written in the wake of the murder of his son Morgan, is a unique piece of creative non-fiction
The murder of Morgan Hehir in 2015 in Nuneaton, a market town in the Warwickshire, shook the local community – the sheer brutality of the attacks, and also that fact something so horrible could happen so close to home. Morgan’s dad, Colin Hehir, began to keep a diary soon after his son’s death – one that chronicled his grief, how Morgan’s death affected his family, and then his fight to get the justice he felt his son hadn’t received, refusing to let Morgan become another statistic, another anonymous victim to knife crime.
The diary eventually made it into the hands of David Whitehouse, an author originally from Nuneaton, and what emerged from this unique collaboration is a feat of creative non-fiction. A mix of true crime and memoir, it’s a book that pays tribute to Morgan as a young man whose life was suddenly cut short, while also being a book about Nuneaton itself, capturing the grit and tragedy beneath the surface of the town, as well as a sense of community and openness.
Whitehouse’s writing is brilliant and devastating, having taken Colin’s diaries in their most raw, vulnerable form and turned them into a compassionate portrayal of a family’s grief and trauma, and a furious indictment of the institutions that failed Morgan and so many other young people like him. A difficult but necessary read.
Phoenix, out now, £16.99
hachette.co.uk