Small Mercies

Listening to this story was like having Carla from Cheers talking at you. Set in Boston in 1974, specifically, the notoriously tough Southie, there is a public side to the story and a personal side to the story and both converge with a big explosion. Historically, Southie schools were to be integrated in the Fall of '74 by busing black students in from their neighborhoods, and Southie might as well be the Deep South for the explosive reception that edict had among the white, working-class Irish. Protests and other forms of unrest were happening all over the area in the preceding summer, and that is what Mary Pat Fennessy finds herself in the middle of. Her 17-yr old daughter Jules will be at one of the schools that is impacted, so the show more whole neighborhood is mobilizing. When a black boy ends up dead at the local subway stop and Jules doesn't come home that night - or any thereafter, Mary Pat knows something is up and begins her own investigation. To say she is a tough broad is an understatement - she is lethal - and will stop at nothing to get to the truth of what happened to Jules. The boy is Auggie Williamson, son of a co-worker of Mary Pat. So much bad stuff for a kid to get mixed up in around there - there's basically an Irish mob that runs the area with the usual problems that go with it: drugs, trafficking, intimidation, bars and strip clubs - all under the veneer of solid Irish Catholic families. I'm always a little shell-shocked at the seedy underside revealed in books and movies. Detective Michael "Bobby" Coyne gets assigned to the case-both the potential murder of Auggie - though it 'looked' like he fell and got hit by a subway train - and the disappearance of Jules. Great gritty crime story - Lehane's specialty - and following Mary Pat as she gets answers - and vengeance - is very suspenseful and also very satisfying. This would definitely be a Godfather caliber/vibe if made into a movie - just starring Carla from Cheers. show less

Desegregation of the Boston Public Schools takes effect on Thursday morning, September 12, 1974. Surrounding this historical moment is the story of a mother, Irish-born Mary Pat Fennessy, a Southie from the projects of Commonwealth, who finds the strength to avenge her daughter’s death against the local gang. Raised in a world where racism is passed from generation to generation, Mary Pat’s daughter, Jules, commits a heinous crime of mercy and pays for it with her life. Not that Jules is innocent, far from it. But after having lost her son to drugs, Mary Pat can’t let her daughter’s death go without retribution. This story, told in Dennis Lehane’s straightforward style, is powerful and hits home in every parent’s heart. It show more brings the pain, guilt, and responsibility of raising children in a far less-than-perfect world front and center in a time that was a powder keg of hate and violence. ‘Small Mercies’ will haunt your thoughts long after you’ve read the last page. show less

I fell in love with Lehane's writing when I picked up Mystic River, and enjoyed the hell out of him through Shutter Island and his Kenzie & Gennaro series. I still believe The Given Day is one of the best novels I've ever read.

But then something happened. Lehane kept the Coughlins going through a couple of more books after The Given Day that felt like diminishing returns. And he put out a couple of standalones that also didn't seem to have that same bite and grit of his earlier stuff.

Still, every time I see a new Lehane novel—based on my adoration of those first nine novels—I get a thrill of anticipation.

And this one? This one did not let me down. I devoured this book.

I often complain, in my reviews, of authors who create unlikeable show more characters, but don't have the skill or ability to get the reader to root for them. I actually quite enjoy unlikeable characters, because the reading experience—when the book is done right by an author with skill—is a more challenging and fun one.

And in Mary Pat, we are given someone that, within a couple of pages, you feel her fierceness, but also her racism.

And, a side note here...this book is set in south Boston during the very real, and very racially charged period when the schools became integrated in 1974. And I had to laugh, because one reader noted her DNF of the book, because the author dared used the word "n*gg*r"...because, you know, back in south Boston in 74, during all this racial strife, NOT ONE PERSON would have ever used that vile word.

Some readers...JFC.

Anyway, so, here we are, with Mary Pat facing the prospect of her daughter going to school with black kids for the first time. In 1974. And I've gotta say, it's seriously been less than 50 years since this has been a thing? Unbelievable.

But now, here's the thing with Lehane. He's a writer's writer. He's an absolute master of dialogue. I'd go so far as to say that, if anyone can lay claim to Elmore Leonard's crown as King of Dialogue, it's Lehane. He gets more across by having a character not say the answer than most do through three pages of characters telling the reader exactly what they need to know. His dialogue is simply gorgeous.

Add to that his characters. I've read other reviews where they complain all the characters are "stock" characters. But are they, though? Did we read the same book? Because, yes, Lehane may start with a stock character, but he always subverts the readers' expectations by throwing a curve ball in there. He certainly did that here, but I won't get into spoiler territory to explain. But I will say that Mary Pat's ongoing parental suffering was a horrible, well-written, ungodly-awful thing to experience.

Then take a look at Lehane's plot. It may be safe to say Lehane has a bit of a formula where he sets up a situation, then gives it a twist, then one more twist, then brings it to a rather violent end, but he does it well, and those twists are beautiful things to behold. Even when I knew what was going to happen, still, as Lehane laid it out, it was always breathtaking. And heartbreaking.

And finally, Lehane has this way of dropping real-life realizations or observations into his characters' minds that are visceral truths about the human condition. There's very few other authors I've read that can do this, and even less that do it well.

This is a gorgeous, painful novel to read. And I adored every single second of it.

And now there are ten books of Lehane's that I think are fantastic. show less

Mary Pat lives in a poor white neighborhood in South Boston in the 1970s, where she is a single mother of a teenage daughter. Boston has just mandated bussing to desegregate the schools, and Mary Pat's daughter is one of the students who will be bussed to a black neighborhood. Mary Pat is racist, and she and her racist neighbors are fighting against the bussing laws. Against this racial tension, a young black man is found dead in a subway station, and Mary Pat's daughter is missing. The story is about Mary Pat's desperate search for her daughter, and the mystery of who killed the black man.

Lehane paints a very vivid picture of South Boston in the 70s. He manages to make Mary Pat a sympathetic character, despite her blatant racism, which show more is the especially ugly type of racism that poor white people have toward Black people, the need to look down on someone from the bottom rung of the ladder. Mary Pat acts from a fierce love for her daughter, and there is a lot of schadenfreude at watching this middle-aged woman single-handedly take on Boston's organized crime rings. show less

If you lived in Boston during the busing crisis of the mid 1970's, this will be a familiar story to you, and you'll understand why Dennis Lehane of Dorchester said it was a necessity for him to write it, finally. Even after all this time, even after all the misery, even after Whitey Bulger was caught and killed in prison, even if thousands of school children were cheated out of their educations, even if you remember ROAR and Pixie Palladino and Louise Day Hicks and Dapper O'Neill, and even if working class and poor white and Black families are now being forced from their former segregated neighborhoods by wealthy renovators, you'll need to read this. If you come from anywhere else and weren't even born yet, you'll be stunned by Mary Pat show more Fennessy, 42, of the Southie projects, raised in hatred and violence, brought up in the code of omerta, that snitches get stitches, who loves fighting with her fists more than relaxing with a cup of coffee and a cigarette, whose breaking point is when her teenage daughter disappears and no one saw anything and no one knows anything, this after losing her son to an overdose, and after two divorces. And Mary Pat will meet Bobby Coyne, BPD detective, Dorchester native, who runs up against her when he finds out that her missing daughter Jules may have been involved in the murder of a young Black man at an MBTA station. This novel brings back all the ugliness, but the pain of the reader dims before the authority and command of Lehane’s writing. show less

This is easily one of Dennis Lehane's best, right up there with Mystic River. It’s a mystery about a daughter who goes missing from the projects on the eve of Boston’s 1974 busing crisis, but Lehane takes it to a deeper level. It becomes a tragic story about the tensions of a racially divided community exploding into acts of violence and the rage of a mother with nothing left to lose forcing her to confront the values she’s lived with all her life. Although the racial slurs and graphic violence in this could be triggering, it wouldn’t have the same impact without them.

Here is some of the best character-driven fiction I have ever read. Now at the end of 2023, I may be changing my choice for "best of the year" to Dennis Lehane's SMALL MERCIES.

Background: the summer of 1974 in the housing projects of (Lehane's favorite) Boston, Southie to be exact. Everyone's upset about the new busing plan, that many white children will be forced to go to schools in black neighborhoods and that many black children will be forced into schools in their neighborhoods. This background is true.

The story: Mary Pat Fennessy's 17-year-old daughter, Jules, goes missing after meeting with friends one evening. So Mary Pat looks for her, and she's not afraid of anyone. As time goes by and we learn along with Mary Pat what has show more probably become of Jules, we see how tough Mary Pat can be. And she's just beginning.

During her search, Mary Pat learns of the death, maybe accidental, maybe not, of her black coworker's 20-year-old son. Little by little, she hears about Jules' possible involvement.

Working this case of possible murder is Homicide Detective "Bobby" Coyne. Separately, he and Mary Pat both come to know what really happened. They each are examples of a parent's love for their child. And she is an example of a mother's vengeance.

SMALL MERCIES is great character-driven fiction in part because it also has plot. Plus, I've read few authors who can write a character-driven story as well as Dennis Lehane. show less