![]() ![]() He’d spoken to his brother the day before and early reports gave little indication of just how devastating it had been.īut steadily his fears began to mount: Dominic’s mobile wouldn’t ring and on the television news the death toll kept leaping upwards. Around one in five of the population died.ĭevastation: The Thai island of Ko Phi Phi the day after the tsunamiĪt first, Simon, sitting in his family home in Edinburgh on Boxing Day, wasn’t unduly bothered by news of the tsunami. ![]() Eileen, who also died, was 24.Īs Stephenson writes, ‘If some evil genius ever wished to construct a place utterly defenceless against a tsunami, any blueprint they came up with would likely look like Ko Phi Phi.’Īround 5,000 people were on the island when the tsunami hit, none of them more than a dozen feet above sea level. Stephenson’s older brother, Dominic, died in the 2004 tsunami that devastated much of the Pacific Rim, including the Thai island of Ko Phi Phi where Dominic was staying with his girlfriend, Eileen. ![]() Now comes Simon Stephenson’s Let Not The Waves Of The Sea, which in its own way is just as remarkable. Joyce Carol Oates’s A Widow’s Story which came out earlier this year was a remarkably stark and unflinching account of the loss of her husband. Wave of destruction: Simon Stephenson, left, and his brother DominicĪlthough bookshop shelves are groaning with Misery Memoirs, there are surprisingly few good books about grief. ![]()
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