Review Summaries

• Its accumulation of detail and clear structure are highly praised. Readers value not only the account of the tragedy itself but also the insistence on asking why it was never stopped.

Reviews

• Having come from a social housing background I thought it was a must read to see how it happened.

• I own a London flat in a block that was clad in ACM panels similar to those that proved so disastrous at Grenfell, so I have a vested interest in this book. But the story, brilliantly researched and told by Peter Apps, is of course much wider and deeper than just the advent of this type of - thank God - now-damned building product. It is a tragic, depressing account. Apps exposes the very worst of UK plc: a construction industry involved in a race to the bottom; the dehumanising effects of neoliberal, cost-cutting, small state ideology; a bizarre, macho, monolithic culture in the London Fire Brigade (recently exposed again); under-qualified people making life-and-death decisions; a local council that seemed to actively loathe most of its residents; a peculiarly British attitude to housing that has stripped it of its essential purpose - to provide a safe home - and turned it into something as greed-driven and unstable as the market for crypto-currency. Add in Brexit, add in COVID, and who could deny that venal, self-serving attitudes, mendacity and callous incompetence are coming to define this country? The book cuts between the development of the lethal materials and shoddy construction processes that were in place at Grenfell and the events of the tragic night itself, creating an effective tension between the business and human sides of the story. Apps is not afraid to point fingers, and rightly so. There has been so much inaction and so many inane excuses, particularly from this government. I, like many hundreds of thousands of flat owners, have despaired as a succession of housing ministers have refused to address the issue. Meanwhile we all sat in our homes, made worthless by events and the mortgage industry, anxiously checking the batteries in our smoke alarms, fixing our self-closing doors, paying for waking watches, and worrying if we would all be made bankrupt by the vast demands from landlords and freeholders for remedial works. 72 people died at Grenfell. 72. Grandparents. Babies. Mothers. Fathers. With so little change, politically and socially - still, unbelievably, we have a government committed to austerity and deregulation - there will be another terrible event like Grenfell, and yet more bodies.

• L'incendi de la Torre Grenfell va suposar un fet traumàtic per la societat anglesa. En el llibre, es relata com es va gestant la tragèdia, des dels anys 70 fins el fatídic día 14 de juny de 2017. És un llibre extraordinari. Escrit d'una manera que et fa sentir molta tristesa pels fets que van ocórrer aquell dia i com van ocórrer. Un llibre per emmarcar i per tenir-ho en les nostres biblioteques

• Peter Apps has a clarity of expression which appears to derive directly from his clarity of purpose; he's angry, and he's right to be. The interweaving of human drama and catastrophe with bureaucratic and political lethargy, incompetence, and just stupid thinking, is very well done. On the cover the single blurb says that this is the first book "on housing" which brought the reviewer to tears; I would challenge any thinking person with an ounce of empathy not to have the same reaction. I found myself pounding the bed next to me with my fist, somewhat to my wife's surprise (though she was accustomed to me reading out the odd especially egregious passage of malfeasance or heedlessness) repeatedly. I bought this book because I read a review essay which mentioned it in tandem with another book ("The New Life," by Tom Crewe, coincidentally with a very similar cover-colour scheme, also waiting beside my bed now), and although I of course knew about the Grenfell Tower disaster I did not know what to expect. You would think that a book about fire safety standards, planning permissions, social housing management and so forth would be dry and hard to warm to; not this book. This book gets its hooks into you more or less instantly and doesn't let go until you're done. It's not merely a literary accomplishment -- it is also the sort of cautionary tale which ought to be read and absorbed by anyone responsible for risk assessment in housing, anyone responsible for urban planning or city management or fire department policy...the lessons Apps draws are so widely applicable that I cannot but describe this book as an extremely important contribution. It doesn't escape me that it is almost certain that none of the constituents who might benefit from it will read it -- here in the US because it's "not local and therefore irrelevant," in the UK because, well, "that's not the way we do things." Anyway, I recommend "Show Me the Bodies" without reservation.

• Heard about this book from a fire course that I took. The instructor said it was a very interesting read for construction material that even the US uses that's dangerous.

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