This book has it all. There's information from behind the scenes, info about the various guests/characters, interviews with those that did the voices, info about the set, the art, the "why."
If you watched Mister Rogers' Neighborhood as a kid, this book is for you.

I can't remember reading such an out-right entertaining biography before (not that I've read a large number) and certainly never one so funny which is a bit surprising considering the subject, a man many found forbidding, even a little scary. Yet Rogers finds the genuine comedy in the man's life as well as the humour Thomas displayed to the people who could get past the facade to the human underneath.

It seems like Thomas found it very difficult to express his emotions in any way other than through his poetry. This caused many problems, leaving his only child extremely bitter, for instance, and alienating many who he could not engage with on an intellectual front. Yet many of his parishioners found him endlessly patient and considerate in times of trouble, illness or bereavement. And so it goes on, developing a picture of a compicated man, full of contradictions, in search of something he never really found, that he probably couldn't name. Perhaps closest to it when bird watching, alone in a wild space.

Rogers, who knew Thomas, also offers helpful insight into the poetry and the social context of Wales in Thomas's lifetime, necessary to anything but a superficial understanding of the man. I strongly recommend that anyone interested in R.S. Thomas, the man or the poet, read this - it won't be a chore.

In her debut novel Gemma Rogers plays a cat and mouse game of who is stalking who:

Eve Harding is walking to meet a friend when her world is completely destroyed when she is grabbed and violently sexually assaulted. Her world completely changes, how she sees herself, her body, everyone around her as well as the places she is familiar going. She wants her assaulter found and punished, but he has eluded the police. Then Eve comes up with a plan, she will not stand by and let this man destroy another woman's life. Eve now has a new mission in life, try to find the main who assaulted her and make him pay.

This was really impressive for a debut novel, I felt that Rogers laid out the story she wanted to tell really well minus at the beginning when I found the time jumps a little bit confusing as they are fairly close together. I wish she would have used titles like before and after or 6 months before or 6 month after. However, I do like books that tell the story where the time frames get closer and closer together, which Rogers does here. This also heightened the suspense throughout the book as you begin to wonder how did Eve after everything end up in the jail cell?

I think that Rogers did a great job in not romanticizing rape in any way, from the rape itself to showcasing the fact that there is not only an physical toll that the victim can experience but the emotional one as well. Rogers does not sugar coat a thing. Do I think that Eve was maybe outside the norm of "recovering" so fast, sure, but I think that all the other aspects that Rogers presented around sexual assault in this book were glamorized at all that this can be overlooked.

Speaking of Eve her growth within this book is amazing, from devastating and destroying her life to trying to take aspects of it back to hunting down her assaulter, you cannot help but cheer for her all along the way. Eve just seems like such a real person throughout and you really get to know her as majority of the chapters feature her. There are a few chapters from the detective, which were good, rounded out part that side of the story but there were also chapters featuring her assaulter. Normally, I like when an author put the bad guy front and center as you as the reader gets to know them better their motives, but in this case I wish Rogers would have held them back. They heighten some of the suspense as you wait for Eve to find out the information that you as the reader know, but I personally think they gave away too much and would have preferred to be left in the dark.

I know I have put quite a few things in this review that wish were different in the book (and I guess I will add that I was kind of hoping for a more realistic ending) but all that said this was an awesome debut novel I did not want to put the book down, and I highly recommend this book who like psychological suspense reads as well as cat and mouse thriller books. I look forward to reading Rogers next book.

Enjoy!!!

    

I know, let's take these varnished, highly polished, glossy pews, sand them down and paint them matt black!

Bizarrely, this action eventually proved popular.