Small Mercies is a tour de force cementing Dennis Lehane as one of the top thriller writers of all time. Taking on race and poverty in South Boston the days approaching school busing, where white students were bussed to predominantly black schools and vice versa, Lehane approaches the situation through the eyes of Mary Pat Fennessy, a white, Irish mother of a high school student in "Southie".
In the summer of 1974, as the schools are about to start busing students across town, Mary Pat, a tough woman from Southie, wakes up one morning to find her daughter never returned the night before. That same night, a young black boy is killed after being struck by a subway. Mary Pat knows her daughter Jules isn't involved, but she starts hunting for her daughter. This inevitably leads her to Marty Butler, who is the chieftain of the Irish mob. He keeps Southie running smoothly, but is he involved?
Small Mercies is an emotional bulldozer. Mary Pat leaves no stone left unturned, no face left unpunched, no beehive hairdo left un-pulled, no box cutter left retracted.
Mary Pat is so very fallible. She's racist, angry, violent, dangerous, and impoverished, but at the same time, she doesn't want to be. She truly wants to be better, and the tensions and riots of the busing crisis only exacerbate it more.
In typical Dennis Lehane fashion, this novel leaves you thinking and musing on the story and characters. I've pondered what makes me love Lehane's books so much, what brings me back to them over and over again, what makes me read each book well over a dozen times and never tire of them, and I think Gregg Hurwtiz put it more succinctly than I ever could. He said, "You're rung out by the end...we inched out a 51% victory." I think this is such a great point. By the end of Small Mercies, you find yourself sometimes agreeing with the antagonist, and although the book wraps up nicely, with a "victory", you oft ask yourself, was all of that pain for the protagonist worth it. If I left you confused there, you best just read the book, and by the end, you'll understand why.
Small Mercies is one of my favorite books of 2023. It's a siren call to the readers, a book that you find impossible to put down, and a smash hit.
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