How we grieve, how a parent grieves, is at the centre of Carys Bray's wonderful debut novel A Song for Issy Bradley. When Issy Bradley dies, her strict Mormon family all deal in different ways. Issy's mum Claire is consumed by grief, taking to Issy's bed for weeks, unable to cope with her husband Ian's blind faith in his faith, which he has turned to more than ever to deal with Issy's death. Their oldest daughter Zippy finds her faith being challenged for the first time in her life, as she battles between her grief at losing Issy and her desire to be a typical teenage girl. Her brother Alma addresses the loss by continuing to push against the Mormon faith, but discovers that it may not be that easy. And youngest child Jacob is optimistic that Issy will come back, that a miracle will occur and his sister will return to him.
Faith, or the lack of it, is a preoccupation of A Song for Issy Bradley. Bray, who was brought up Mormon, left the church in her thirties, almost the opposite of Claire, who in the book we find out became a Mormon because of her relationship with Ian. Claire takes on the Mormon faith willingly, but still rails against it sometimes, finding it difficult to reconcile her needs for herself and her family with the demands placed on her by her faith. Claire is cynical, she gets offended, she wants to be selfish - all perfectly human traits but ones that don't always sit well with her faith.
