"Change, for those who don't have a say in it, feels like a pretty word for death. Death to what you want, death to whatever plans you'd been making, death to the life you've always known."
Centered on a force of nature struggling with loss and identity on the eve of mandated desegregation busing in 1970s Boston, "Small Mercies" features Dennis Lehane at his best. His ability to vividly render the grittier aspects of Boston lends a spirit of time and place to this tale.
The driving force of "Small Mercies," Mary Pat Fennessy has lost both of her children and two spouses, and with little to live for, she takes on the neighborhood mob. Some liberties are taken in rendering some unproportional response from said mob and turning her into something of a Southie superhero, but the overall effect is both subtle and powerful.
"Bobby is struck by the notion that something both irretrievably broken and wholly unbreakable lives at the core of this woman. And those qualities cannot coexist. A broken person can't be unbreakable. An unbreakable person can't be broken. And yet here sits Mary Pat Fennessy, broken but unbreakable. The paradox scares the shit out of Bobby."
Lehane has created an immersive tale wrapped inside a quick read, spending time on the overt racism, sheer hopelessness, and class consciousness that propels tiny lives into big events.
"It feels good for a moment to remember who they were before they again have to sit with who they are."
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