Mercy Among the Children
David Adams Richards
Jonathon Cape – Random House
That’s the way books work isn’t it? By working the emotions. We are obliged with books to create our own images, and these are always produced with some sort of feeling, an emotion. Mercy Among the Children is a book that thoroughly engages your emotions, working them with exquisite precision.
David Adams Richards is obviously a sage as well as a craftsman. He skillfully invests in his reader the character of a child who grows up with a father who has sworn never to harm anything. The setting is in the Maritime Provinces of Eastern Canada – the same cold harsh environment that informed Annie Proulx’s The Shipping News. The family is exceptionally poor and thus falls prey to all manner of predator from the local policeman to the almost as poor neighbours. The death of an intellectually handicapped local boy brings the dynamics of this small breadline community into sharp relief as it seeks a scapegoat and chooses the family. Throughout, the human spirit soars.
Mercy Among the Children was a magnificent read. I am both wiser, and richer for having read it. An outstanding book.
Review published in Good Reading Magazine.
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Theresa Sjoquist
Theresa Sjoquist
