| Title | : | Small Mercies |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0062129481 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780062129482 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages | : | 320 |
| Publication | : | First published April 25, 2023 |
In the summer of 1974 a heatwave blankets Boston and Mary Pat Fennessy is trying to stay one step ahead of the bill collectors. Mary Pat has lived her entire life in the housing projects of “Southie,” the Irish American enclave that stubbornly adheres to old tradition and stands proudly apart.
One night Mary Pat’s teenage daughter Jules stays out late and doesn’t come home. That same evening, a young Black man is found dead, struck by a subway train under mysterious circumstances. The two events seem unconnected. But Mary Pat, propelled by a desperate search for her missing daughter, begins turning over stones best left untouched—asking questions that bother Marty Butler, chieftain of the Irish mob, and the men who work for him, men who don’t take kindly to any threat to their business.
Set against the hot, tumultuous months when the city’s desegregation of its public schools exploded in violence, Small Mercies is a superb thriller, a brutal depiction of criminality and power, and an unflinching portrait of the dark heart of American racism. It is a mesmerizing and wrenching work that only Dennis Lehane could write.
Small Mercies Reviews
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It feels good for a moment to remember who they were before they again have to sit with who they are.
I thought this was horrible, but excellent. Gritty, nuanced and extremely powerful.
What Lehane has done here is pull an old story, a common mystery/thriller trope, one so overdone precisely because it is guaranteed to wage war with our emotions-- that of a mother searching for her missing child --and placed it in the middle of a setting I've never seen it in before.
A missing child is truly a wound that never heals-- worse than an outright loss, it is being in limbo and never having closure, the last threads of hope keeping you from grieving and moving on. When Mary Pat's teenage daughter doesn't come home, she will stop at nothing to find out what happened to her. And woe betide anyone who might have hurt her baby.
Mary Pat is vicious and a very complex, often unlikable, character. Raised in the Southie projects, she's grown up fighting back against the world. She has an interesting journey in
Small Mercies and is forced to reckon with some of her long-held beliefs, but this is not a redemption narrative. Her fury rages as she bulldozes through the world of this book and a lot of people get hurt by her, directly and indirectly.
Is she right? Is she good? The answer by most people's standards is "no", but it is also near impossible to look away from her pain and anger. I was certainly invested.
Lehane sets the tale of Mary Pat and her missing daughter against the Boston busing crisis-- when attempts to desegregate Boston public schools were met with racial tensions and riots. As Mary Pat digs around, it becomes clear that the story is bigger than one missing person, and is, in fact, about a huge web of race, poverty, drugs and exploitation, with her daughter Jules caught up in the centre of it.
The author also acknowledges the hypocrisy of rich white people tutting at the racism of poor white people while they themselves remain untouched, sending their kids to very segregated, very white, private schools.
I really liked it, though "liked" seems inappropriate. The fact that the good guys and the bad guys were sometimes the same people just made this an even more memorable and affecting read.
Please be aware that the book contains graphic violence, racial and homophobic slurs, and drug use. -
***HAPPY PUBLICATION DAY***
In this novel Mr. Lehane returns to his hometown of Boston. The novel begins during the sweltering summer of 1974. A federal judge had ruled that two Boston high schools, one in a black section and one in a white section, would be the first to integrate.
None of the residents of Southie, a strongly Irish area of Boston, are happy about the decision to bus their children from their all white HS to the all black HS in Roxbury.
Not all of the resentment is because of their racial issues; a lot of the people in the tight knit community just don’t want to be told what to do!! This is THEIR neighborhood and they like things the way they are. There will be trouble to come and it will be BIG!!
“Southie” consists mostly of housing projects and Mary Pat Fennessey has lived her entire life here. This used to be an area that helped each other but drugs and crime are rampant and have eroded the community.
Mary Pat lost her son to heroin after he returned from Vietnam. She is a single mother struggling to keep her 17 y/o daughter close to home and out of trouble. She's a very tough lady; she works hard but she likes to fight, verbally and physically. She works long hours at a nursing home and just barely manages to buy food and pay the rent..
One night her daughter, Jules, doesn’t return home. On that same evening it is reported that a young Black man was found dead on the tracks at the train station. It was presumed an accident but the police aren’t so sure.
This was an incredibly hard book to read but the characters and the quality of the writing kept me turning the pages. I knew nothing about Boston at this time and this was an eye opener!!
The sheer amount of drug deaths, violence and crimes against women were staggering. The Irish mob bosses that brought these drugs in became very wealthy, while the poor died tragic deaths. Pretty typical of the way things are now!
The police and many in local government were just as much to blame. They weren’t all bad, some tried incredibly hard to keep the kids out of trouble and curb the flow of drugs. One such character, Bobby, stole my heart!
The most depressing thing about this novel is that not enough has changed. There is still racism, drugs are killing more people than ever and no solutions have been found.
Some found this book to be hopeful, I did not. Mr. Lehane’s writing is so realistic that it had me crying and his characters so real that I won’t soon forget them.
Can I recommend this book – Yes, if you are ready for a tough read and I mean tough. There is a lot of sex, brutality and violence and it is descriptive.
I received an ARC of this novel from the publisher through Edelweiss. All opinions in this review are mine alone and written with honesty and a heavy heart. -
Set amidst the unease and violence of Boston’s desegregation crisis of 1974, we meet Mary Pat Fennessy. Mary Pat has lived her whole life in ’Southie’, an Irish American enclave. When Mary Pat’s daughter Jules goes missing, she starts asking questions, but that only brings her to the attention of the Irish mob, and in particular Marty Butler. The thing is, you don’t go stirring things up, bringing unwanted attention to Marty Butler’s many ‘businesses’, - that’s totally crossing the line.
However, that doesn’t stop Mary Pat, she’s already suffering intolerable grief and Marty Butler or not, she WILL discover what’s happened to her daughter.
You might not agree with Mary Pat and her methods, you may not like her, but you won’t question her motives nor her determination and bravery in the midst of great danger to herself.
Mary Pat is a deeply complex character, and it’s definitely a tough read, but I challenge you to put this book down - it’s a truly beautiful read - beautiful in its truth, but ugly and brutal at the same time, with drugs, violence, racism, and many other equally distressing subjects in the mix, ( how little has changed)! Lehane is a master of the true nature of the human mind and how it works, whether that be good or bad intentions. Definitely recommended.
*Thank you to Netgalley and Little, Brown Book Group UK Abacus for my ARC in exchange for an honest unbiased review * -
In case anyone was under the misconception that racism is limited to the South, Dennis Lehane’s Small Mercies will disavow that notion. The story takes place in 1974, just as desegregation has become mandated in Boston schools. Of course, the two neighborhoods affected the most are South Boston, home of the Irish mob, and Roxbury. Lehane absolutely gets the anger against the liberal elites and this goes a long way to explain how 3 decades later, Trump got elected.
Mary Pat Fennessy is the very epitome of a poor, working class mother unable to make ends meet. This might be a book written in this year, but it accurately spells out the language and attitudes of those times. Mary Pat is no exception. She’s as prejudiced as the rest of South Boston. If you are easily offended by racist language and thoughts, steer clear. For everyone else, run, do not walk to read or listen to this book.
The story starts when Jules, Mary Pat’s daughter, doesn’t come home one night. At the same time, a young black man is struck and killed by a subway train. The question is if or how these two events are related.
They don’t come any darker or grittier than this book. Mary Pat is the paramount momma bear who will do anything, cross anyone, to get answers. “Nobody ever taught this woman how to quit.”
I was impressed at how many climaxes this story had. I would think the book was getting ready to end, only to realize there were still hours left in the audio book. And boy, what an ending!
Robin Miles was a fabulous narrator. She was Mary Pat! -
This brought some history back as I live in Boston. The busing crisis was a big deal. No one wanted it. A definite mistake. Rather than improving schools in all districts, the politicians chose to bring children to a city they were not familiar with. Dennis Lehane projected this well in his book. Such a huge politic issue for Boston.
Dennis Lehane is a wonderful local author.
4 out of 5 stars -
In 1974 the US District Court ruled that the Boston School Committee had ‘systematically disadvantaged black school children’ in the public school system. The remedy chosen was to begin busing students between predominantly white and predominantly black neighbourhoods in order to desegregate the city’s public high schools. History tells us that this decision was not universally popular in those districts, feeding racist violence and fuelling existing class tensions. It’s against this background that Lehane structures his latest explosive tale.
Mary Pat Fennessey has always lived in the housing projects in the south of the city, an area with its own proud way of doing things. The people here are predominantly of Irish American descent, they are close knit and many rarely move outside the confines of their own small community. One night her daughter, Jules, fails to come home after a night out with friends. That in itself isn’t entirely unheard of but having already lost a son to a drug habit born of his service in Vietnam and fed by local pushers, Mary Pat desperately contacts anyone who might have seen her. But to no avail.
At this point we start to become acutely aware of the segregated life people in this part of the city actually live; white and black people really don’t mix and their reaction to one another’s appearance on their own turf exceeds antipathy. For Mary Pat, even in a work environment where civility is a necessity, friendship is considered unconscionable. So when the son of a black work colleague is killed in what might be an accident or, more likely, an act of malice, her reaction is one of sympathy though she can’t quite bring herself to write a reciprocal note along the lines of the one she received when her own son died.
The desperate search for her daughter eventually leads Mary Pat to the door of a pub owned and run by the local Irish mob, in an attempt to seek their assistance. We learn that this violent gang controls pretty much everything that goes on here, setting the rules and dealing out the punishments as they see fit. But though she is met with a somewhat sympathetic ear, she quickly realises that if Jules is to be found then she’s going to have to do the finding.
This story throws a light on the gritty, dark and often violent life that many in ‘the projects’ led at this time. In Mary Pat, the author has found the perfect vehicle to bring this all vividly to life. She’s both determined in defence of the community in which she lives but also increasingly questioning of the impact this has on everyday life and on the relationships this fosters and just as often prohibits. Lehane has produced two of my favourite novels in Shutter Island and Mystic River and I can now add this one to the list. Outstanding!
My thanks to Little, Brown Book Group UK, for providing a copy of this book via NetGalley in return for an honest review. -
Again, late on my review. ( I AM hopeless.) Another absolutely riveting read from the brilliant Dennis Lehane. SMALL MERCIES is set in the Boston he brings to life so vividly, now 1974, in the midst of the "busing battle" that August and September. In a tale that is absolutely unflinching, he brings to life a heroine who in her search for her missing daughter has to face her own racism. Part thriller, part character study, part exploration of what it meant to be part of a South Boston crime family, SMALL MERCIES is at once deeply moving and powerfully gripping.
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"On June 12, 1974, U.S. District Court Judge W. Arthur Garrity, Jr., ruled in 'Morgan v. Hennigan' that the Boston School Committee had 'systematically disadvantaged black school children' in the public school system. The only remedy, the judge concluded, was to begin busing students between predominantly white and predominantly black neighborhoods to desegregate the city's public high schools.
The school in the neighborhood with the largest African American population was Roxbury High School. The school in the neighborhood with the largest white population was South Boston High School. It was decided that these two schools would switch a significant portion of their student bodies.
This order was to take effect at the beginning of the school year, on September 12, 1974. Students and parents had less than ninety days from the date of the ruling to prepare.
It was very hot in Boston that summer, and it seldom rained."
And with that Historical Note, Small Mercies by Dennis Lehane begins set in the most tumultuous episodes in Boston's history as this masterpiece unfolds with an all-consuming tale of revenge, family love, and festering hate. We are introduced to Mary Pat Fennessy, trying to keep her family together in the housing projects of "Southie," the Irish American enclave that subbornly adheres to old tradition where she has spent her life. Mary Pat Fennessy has a fairly close but tense relationship with her teenage daughter, Jules. One night she doesn't come home and Mary Pat is frantic. The next day as she is working as an aide in the local nursing home, she learns that the son of a black co-worker, Dreamy Williamson, has been found dead in a mysterious subway incident. It seems that both of them have lost children now, one a death and the other a disappearance. How these two women respond as well as the level of support that each recieves from their respective communities is what drives this riveting and gripping mystery. The novel focuses on Mary Pat, a good person, but still sharing the tribal prejudices of her Irish neighborhood toward people they believe are encroaching on their turf. But as Mary Pat keeps searching for what happened to Jules, she discovers how much she has to learn about her daughter, the neighborhood and the crime syndicate that has ruled her home turf, their power and authority unchallenged. She risks everything to discover the truth. As Mary Pat Fennessy tells the investigator: "I'm not a person anymore, Bobby. I'm a testament. . . That's what ghosts are--they're testaments to what never should have happened and must be fixed before their spirits leave this world." -
In 1974, the Boston public schools are about to be desegregated by busing and both the Black and white (Irish) residents are on edge. Mary Pat Fennessy lost her son to drugs that even the Irish gang boss seems unable to keep out of the neighborhood. Mary Pat’s 17 year old daughter Jules goes missing. On the same night, a young Black man is struck by a subway train. The police see a connection. As Mary Pat desperately searches for Jules, the gang boss makes it known that she is asking too many questions.
The author goes full out with raw emotions and ugly thoughts. Mary Pat is often physically violent and unable to escape racist thoughts, even though she has moments when she recognizes that her upbringing and surroundings have trapped her in racism. This is not a feel good story, but it felt very honest. We hear the voices of not only Mary Pat but also the angry white mob, the heartbroken parents of the dead man and a cop with his own troubled past. Robin Miles narrated the audio book and she did an excellent job with all of this. -
I’m still waiting for Lehane to write something as tightly plotted as Mystic River. This isn’t it.
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This is as 5-star as it gets for me. A story yanked from history's headlines, fleshed out with characters who pull at your heartstrings while you tear out your hair at their maddening humanity. A setting so immersive you are sweating in a heatwave's stinking humidity, the broad South Boston accents echoing in alleyways and in your head. Dennis Lehane layers a work of crime fiction genre into a portrait of a city confronting its racism to breathless, soul-searching, devastating effect.
At the tail end of the scorching summer of '74, Boston is simmering to a boil. The court-ordered desegregation of area schools has come to land on its poorest neighborhoods: working-class South Boston. At the start of the new school year, just days away, buses will deliver Black and White students into each other's schools. Scores of White residents aren't having it and organized protests are scheduled at City Hall. Mary Pat Fennessy, a generations-deep Southie, is going along, of course. She's duty-bound by the clan-like neighborhood to oppose desegregation. She's also once-widowed and once-divorced mother of a Vietnam Vet who died of a heroin overdose soon after returning to Southie from his tour of duty, and of 17-year-old Jules, her beloved daughter, for whom she hopes better things than to end up poor and alone in Southie, like her mom.
As the novel opens, Jules heads out the door with her three friends and vanishes into the thick, troubled night. Mary Pat, tough from all her years as an Irish Southie broad, becomes something else entirely: a one-woman vengeance machine. Needling its way past her armor and into her conscience is the news that another mother, one of her co-workers at the old folks' home where she is a caregiver, has lost a child the same night her daughter went missing. Auggie Williamson, a bright young man with a promising future, is found dead at a Southie subway stop. Mary Pat knows in her gut that Auggie's death is somehow tied to Jules's disappearance. Problem is, Auggie's Black, alone at night in the wrong neighborhood and Mary Pat's questions are pushing the buttons of sleeping dogs that attack when wakened (apologies for the ragoût of metaphors there).
She makes an ally of Detective Michael "Bobby" Coyne, a single dad also from South Boston who is assigned to investigate the Williamson homicide. Coyne survived a tour of Vietnam but his marriage didn't. He lives in a bizarre household of five sisters and one brother (a failed priest), all of whom are unmarried but who dote on Coyne's young son during his twice-monthly weekend stays. Coyne is the tender foil here, the observer who Lehane inhabits to convey his childhood memories. He's the hope that the cycle of generational violence and racism can be broken and something better built from the pieces.
I refrain from discussing more of the plot because this is, after all, a suspense novel and is driven by a central whodunit that explodes in cinematic violence. It takes a certain suspension of disbelief to follow Mary Pat from pudgy housewife to gun-wielding vigilante, but it's also impossible not to. I devoured this novel in a short two days.
It's shocking and painful to read the constant litany of racist epithets and beliefs that these characters spew but I'm relieved that Dennis Lehane was "allowed" to write reality : we cannot cancel our way out of history lest we be condemned to repeat it.
One of the year's best. -
Cross the line
Wow, this book is incredibly intense and overflows with raw emotion.
The unadulterated love a mother has for her child shines through every word. It's astonishing to witness the extraordinary measures she's willing to take in order to find her child, and it's infuriating to see the flaws within the justice system fueling her anger. The realization that the line between heroes and villains can blur, with some individuals embodying both roles, adds an unforgettable and deeply impactful layer to this book.
Without a doubt, this is an exceptionally compelling and forceful piece of writing. -
“My job Is not to write to your safe space”--Dennis Lehane
Spoilers in here.
In Dennis Lehane's Small Mercies (2023), as with his Mystic River, there's a girl missing, but in this one the political background/moment is 1974, when Judge Wendell Arthur Garrity Jr. made the decision to desegregate the Boston schools and all Hell broke loose. Race is a regular theme in Lehane books, explored honestly in the context of Lehane's beloved white Southie Boston neighborhood, and an adjacent one occupied by blacks. Well, as far as I can see most things are explored "honestly" in his books about Boston--meaning Lehane loves the place but is not afraid to name what he sees as its flaws.
"The bus carrying the few Black students from Roxbury to South Boston High School was pelted with eggs, bottles, and bricks. Rage was everywhere. It was like, 'Want a side of rage with your beer?' It was everywhere.”
As with other great mystery writers I know, the mysteries/crimes in this book are nestled in the prickly rose bushes of particular continuing social issues--race, #metoo, closed (and then sometimes hateful) communities, drugs. Of course Lehane also has in mind racial conflicts and the proliferation of drugs leading to violence happening today. So he makes it clear whatever we are experiencing with racism in this country has been around for a long time. And Boston's desegregation battles are as good a place as any as an historical site to explore the continuing blight of racism in the country/world.
Our main character is Mary Pat Fennessy, a 42-year-old single mother living in South Boston’s projects. Near the eve of the busing, her (white) daughter Jules doesn't come home. Around the same time a black teenager is killed, too. In trying to figure our what happens to her daughter--not going to the cops initially--Mary Pat explores the "code" that creates closed cultures and racism, in her own neighborhood. And in herself. In her family.
So, spoiler but no surprise, Jules is dead, and some people make it clear that she was one of the four white kids that chased a black boy into a subway train and murdered him. So: Missing daughter, we can relate, and she is not a saint. How did she get this ways? You have to be taught. Mary Pat had already lost a son to drugs, and a husband. Now she has lost her only other child, a 17-year-old. In the process she finds out how mean-spirited, even ugly, her neighbors can be. She also finds out how the drug trade killing Southie (and killed her son) has developed. So she's a woman on a fast journey to find out who things, with nothing to lose.
Odd that at the same time I am finishing two revenge novels, this one on audio and also Jo Nesbo's Killing Moon, reading hard cover. The literary precedents are of course myriad: Hamlet, Titus Andronicus, Thomas Middleton's The Revenger's Tragedy, to name a cfew old omes, and more recently, re: another women scorned, Kill Bill! Mary Pat is mad as hell and not gonna take it anymore, and is also violent. She is a product of Southie and never questioned its values, but now she is looking hard at it--racism and drugs--and comes to a kind of personal and cultural epiphany. And yeah. almost everything works out for her investigations, almost too easily/unbelievably, sure, but there is something also satisfying, emotionally, about the process, even if you can't exactly justify everything she does. She takes action, she's by no means helpless. And there's a big ending you know will play well in Hollywood (Lehane, of The Wire fame, knows film, and this is being developed into a series by Lehane).
Lehane in other novels likes over-the-top violence to match his and Southie rage, and this is crazy mad, too, but he also gets the cultural vibe just right. Like him, I lived through that and read about it and saw it on tv as it happened. He says what people were (and are today) saying; he shows what terrible things were (as today are) being done in the name of preserving the racial purity of Southie.
In the end, he speaks of “life in all its highs and lows, all its dashed dreams and surprising joys, its little tragedies and minor miracles.”
I think it is a great novel, an anguished one. Because she gets quickly to answers, it feels a little bit like an allegory of awareness. A grim period in American history, with some hope seen in a moment near the end where two of the more admirable characters--one black, one white--speak to each other, in healing, without naivete about what has happened in the following fifty years. -
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Immediately after finishing Dennis Lehane's Small Mercies I went online intending to extoll its virtues in advance of this review. Instead, I read about how, in Kansas City, MO, a 16-year-old Black kid, Ralph Yarl, went to pick up his younger siblings but accidentally went to the wrong house. Only, it was the wrong house in more ways than one. He rang the doorbell of an 84-year-old white man named Andrew D. Lester and was shot twice - once in the head, and again in the arm as he sought to escape his assailant and find rescue amongst Lester's neighbors. Yarl survived and is lucky to be alive, a small mercy in and of itself.
I couldn't help but find echoes of Lehane's Small Mercies in this latest tragedy. Although his is set in 1974, amidst a summer heatwave with aggressions boiling over after Boston's court rulings to desegregate their public schools, it's a timely reminder how of just how small our progressive strides have been in the intervening decades. The Civil Rights movement may be over, but Black parents still have to have the talk with their children, generations later, about the dangers they face because of the color of their skin. Police can kill Black Americans with impunity more often than not, and ringing the doorbell of a wrong house can be a death sentence. Or, in the case of Small Mercies, being in the wrong neighborhood, at the wrong time, and being spotted by the wrong people.
Mary Pat Fennessy's daughter, Jules, has gone missing, her absence coinciding with the death of a Black teenager in a subway. But, in an effort to find Jules, the deeper Mary Pat digs the more she is forced to confront that what at first seemed to be a strange coincidence is inextricably linked, and she's going to move heaven and earth to find her kid, regardless of who it upsets.
Small Mercies is an unflinching look at race, class, and power in the Southie housing projects of Boston. It's a neighborhood under the protection of Irish mobsters and defined by its hypocrisies. These white thugs kill without consequence, at least until one tough Southie broad goes on a rampage to find who took her daughter and is warned about being a "bad neighbor." In the aftermath of it all, Mary Pat's family worries about the damage to all their reputations for her having taken on these gangsters. It's a neighborhood baked in racism, generations of it, passed down from parent to child like a hereditary disease. Mary Pat is forced, at times, to confront her own learned racism, but not to conquer it because her small, tightly knit, ignorant world has always told her that her white skin makes her better.
Lehane throws us into the deep end of these Southie projects and it's not at all a pretty place. It's a neighborhood full of fear, and that fear begets violence, as it so often does. There's nothing closeted about these people's racism -- it's the kind of neighborhood the MAGA faithful want to return to, a view of the "good old days" Trump and his kind reminisce about, where racial slurs are slung fast and free by white people who think they're God's own gift to the world and white, black, or brown don't mix, not ever. That's what they've been taught and they surely do believe it, because, ultimately, racism is a tool of the powerful to maintain their grasp on power, however little it may be. Lehane doesn't shy away from Southie's racism and the proliferation of epithets throughout Small Mercies might even make Tarantino blush. He also doesn't dwell in this muck to be edgy or cool, but to capture a mood of a particular time and place and people. The desegregation of Boston schools and the violent protests it sparked are all part and parcel of an American past not so far removed from the present day. This is a piece of Lehane's childhood. And it's a past we must reckon with rather than shy away from, now more than ever as GOP lawmakers make inroads at banning books that challenge the notion of straight white male supremacy and protest the teachings of critical race theory and slavery.
Small Mercies is rampant with all kinds of ugly stuff, but ignorance has never made anyone better or smarter. I'll always take an unpleasant truth over a comforting lie, personally. But it's also one hell of a sharp, precise, and cutting crime novel, chock full of violent revenge and spearheaded by a compelling and truly flawed Boston project-tough mother. Small Mercies is certainly an uncomfortable read at times, as it should be, particularly, and maybe especially, in light of recent headlines. Lehane's most uncomfortable truth here is that the old adage is still correct - the more things change, the more they stay the same. -
This is my first Dennis Lehane so many thanks to Netgalley for the copy.
Not an easy read by any means due to the issues tackled. It pulls your insides out at times.
Set in Boston during the first de-segregation attempt in South Boston. So you've started with a deeply controversial issue. We begin the story of Mary Pat Fennessy and her daughter, Jules, some days before the busing. Mary Pat has lost one child to drugs; one husband is dead and her second has left her. Jules is her whole heart now. So when her daughter doesn't return from a night out with her "useless" boyfriend Mary Pat is not going to take some pitiful excuses lying down.
She begins to make waves in the neighbourhood where Irish Catholic families run the show and God help you if you begin to make enough noise to bring the Police round. But Mary Pat does not care. She doesn't care who she accuses or upsets. She certainly doesn't care who gets hurt because she intends to find Jules and punish those who have lied to her.
This book is a visceral charge through a few days. The characters are stark in their reality. Everything is literally seen in black and white; us and them; with us or against us.
I was absolutely captivated by this book. I read it in a couple of sittings because I found it almost impossible to put down. There are very emotive issues discussed and I certainly wept for almost all the main characters at one point or another.
Absolutely brilliant. Highly recommended. -
In September 1974 Boston is in the midst of a heat wave and tempers are short. Adding fuel to the already frayed tempers is forced desegregation. White students in South Boston's neighborhood are to be bussed to Roxbury while Black students in Roxbury will be bussed to Southie. Protests are planned. Southie is tight knit neighborhood of mostly Irish and they don't want to be told what to do.
Mary Pat Fennessy has lived her entire life in the projects of Southie. She is a single mom who works multiple jobs trying to stay ahead of the bill collectors and raise her seventeen year old daughter, Jules. She lost her son to heroin after he returned from Vietnam. Mary Pat has had a tough life and she is not afraid to fight. Literally.
One night Jules doesn't come home. People tell Mary Pat not to worry. She stayed with a friend. It is not the first time Jules didn't come home. The same night Jules didn't come home a young black man was killed. He was struck by a subway train. Was it an accident? Suicide? Or something more sinister?
In Mary Pat's quest to find Jules she knocks on a lot of doors and makes a lot of phone calls. She asks a lot of questions. This brings attention to the area that Marty Butler, chief of the Irish mob, doesn't like. The protests over bussing have already brought the police and media to the area but Mary Pat will not be deterred and she is not afraid of Marty.
Race, protests, bussing, a heat wave, the Irish mob, and a mothers search for her missing daughter. This a dark novel that keeps you turning the pages. -
When I picked up Small Mercies by Dennis Lehane, I had no idea what I had gotten myself into. This novel is riveting, intense, poignant, powerful and beautifully written. I hated to put it down. It is, for certain, one of my top ten books for 2023.
The novel explores the impact of legislation for the desegregation of schools in 1974 Boston. The fear of desegregation is felt primarily in the poor white areas in south Boston and the black areas of the city such as Roxbury. No one wants busing. At the same time, a young black man is murdered and a white teenager goes missing. Are these two events connected? If so, how can it be explained?
The characterizations in this novel are what lift it to a literary must-read. Every person in the book has an inner and outer life that is fully examined. Lehane is a master at creating intense and vivid protagonists, whether they are ones you root for or hope to never run across again.
Mary Pat's daughter has disappeared and she is determined to find her. She already lost a son to an overdose after he returned from the Vietnam war. She does not think she can survive the loss of another child. She is a member of a committee protesting desegregation but her priorities change once her daughter doesn't come home. She will do anything and challenge anyone to find her child. She is willing to make enemies of her friends and fight for her daughter's return - dead or alive.
There is a debilitating drug problem in south Boston. Mary Pat finds herself caught up in the midst it and becomes an outcast and a wanted woman. The police are reticent to put too much of their energies into finding Mary Pat's daughter until she becomes a force to be reckoned with. How does the drug problem coalesce with the disappearance of Mary Pat's daughter?
The fear that blacks have of whites and the disdain and fear that whites have for blacks is fully examined in stunning prose. Nothing is held back as Lehane explores the inbred racism and hatred that is passed down from generation to generation. I had to flinch at the violence of the language as well as the violent actions that occur in this novel.
This is a book that I am recommending to all my friends. It is a must read. It is one of those rare literary page-turners that is both a thriller and a highbrow novel. Be prepared. It is unlike any other book you will have read. It occupies a seat of its own, created by the prose and narrative that the author has created. -
This was disappointing albeit a page turner. The combination of a novel set on the eve of busing in Boston in 1974 and its intersection with the Irish mob in Southie was an irresistible for me. But every character was taken from central casting--the saintly Black people, the rough Irish youth, the mobsters who pretended to be family but were really brutal, the upper middle-class girl who wants to save people, etc. And much of the plot felt like a mish-mash of something I've read many, many times before with very little in the way of twists and turns.
The one possible exception to all of this criticism was the main character, Mary Pat, a mother who is so driven by trying to find out what happened to her missing daughter that she almost literally bulldozes everything in her way. But even she was one-dimensional, just in a slightly more novel manner than the other one-dimensional characters.
Still it was riveting at times and I don't regret having read it. But I somewhat wish I had just re-read portions of
Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families or
Black Mass instead. -
My first Dennis Lehane book and I’m totally excited to read more of his offerings. Small Mercies hooked me from the very first page. Excellent character development…. I’m originally from the Boston area so I enjoyed the fantastic Boston accent narration. Highly recommend this gem!
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Once again Dennis Lehane has used the gritty Boston suburbs as the setting for Small Mercies. This time he has chosen the mid-1970s as the time period, a significant time in the city’s history with a war raging over racial integration within the local high schools.
A young woman has gone missing after a night out with friends. Jules is still a teenager and she likes to party each Saturday night. Mary Pat Fennessy, her mother is tough, brought up in the rough and tumble of Boston’s Southie Projects. She has always been prepared to fight for her place and would do anything for her children, so when Jules fails to appear she goes on a single-minded mission to find out what’s happened to her.
Mary Pat’s methods cause waves in the local area and this threatens to affect the smooth running of the businesses of the local Irish mob boss, Marty Butler. He quickly steps in to warn Mary Pat off, something that encourages her to redouble her efforts.
On the same night that Jules disappeared a young black man was found dead on the tracks at the local train station. It could have been an accident but the circumstances aren’t particularly clear. What soon becomes clear is that the paths of Jules and this man crossed.
Mary Pat is itching for a fight, she wants revenge or, at least, some kind of terrible justice. Through a number of altercations we get a solid idea of just how tough she is and how desperate she’s becoming as she continues to fail to find her daughter. A showdown is looming.
Dennis Lehane delivers another emotionally charged mystery that incorporates into it a significant slice of American history. The social unrest triggered by the court-ordered desegregation of area schools around Boston provides a tinderbox backdrop to an unfolding personal tragedy. The racism, insidious creep of drugs into struggling neighbourhoods and clan-like divisions on the streets make this a compelling story that managed to lead me down an increasingly dark and hopeless path.
There is a shocking realness to the events that take place on the streets of Boston as battle lines are drawn as are imagined boundary lines. It’s tribal, brutal and confronting in its imagery and, from the language used to the displays of hatred, it’s apparent that much is drawn from real-life experiences.
“White broads from Southie aren’t friends with black women from Mattapan. The world doesn’t work that way.”
This is a finely wrought story of dramatic suspense that I found completely compelling. Its treatment of race and power and the inequalities of both is right on point. It speaks clearly of the rage and outrage felt by many and illustrates the way in which it leads to wanton acts of violent revenge. Some may find the content of Small Mercies uncomfortable to read but, unfortunately, our news feeds are filled with similar stuff on a daily basis and so it continues. -
•Quick Deets•
Missing teen
Integration of Schools
Boston
•Rating•
⭐⭐⭐ 3 Stars
•Review•
We all know Lehane is an amazing author, but this, for me, wasn't it. It felt like two completely different stories that were simply not well meshed. Mary Pat is a kick ass character, but I needed to know more about the others. I wanted to know Jules better...I just didn't care about her. I wanted to know more about Dreamy and Auggie.
•Similar Recommend Reads•
At the End
The Last House on the Street
Long Bright River -
The acclaimed author, Dennis Lehane, delivers his 14th novel, the highly anticipated SMALL MERCIES — Inspired by actual events, a gritty, raw, and compelling story of one neighborhood caught up in one of the most turbulent dark periods in Boston's history, exploring the 1974 court-ordered busing.
The protagonist, Mary Pat Fennessy, is a 42-year-old single mother living in South Boston's projects. When her daughter Jules fails to return home the same night a Black teenager is killed under mysterious circumstances, Mary Pat begins to make connections between the two events and, for the first time, questions her Irish American neighborhood's unwritten code, which she'd long adhered to.
The novel takes place during the hot summer months of 1974, leading to the first day of school in September when the city's desegregation of its public schools explodes in violence.
African American and white school swap set during the days of violence and racism. Those most affected lived in the lower-income, working-class neighborhoods of South Boston, Charlestown, Hyde Park, Roxbury, Mattapan, and Dorchester — highly segregated areas prone to racial violence.
Mary Pat Fennessy is the star of this well-written novel. She is a long-time Southie public housing resident and barely makes ends meet with the bills, even with two jobs. She is tough as a man. Rage and hate consume her, but her daughter, Jules, is the most important thing in her life.
Her 17-year-old daughter Jules has not returned from a recent night out. Ironically, the same night there was a horrific incident at the Columbia subway station; newspapers reported that some white teens chased a Black teen onto the tracks, resulting in his death.
Mary Pat (alcoholic, smoking, foul mouth) says she is not a racist. Her first husband died young. Her son, Noel, died of a drug overdose after returning from Vietnam. A second marriage unraveled. Her teenage daughter, Jules, is all she has left.
The Black teenager is the son of Dreamy Williamson, a fellow healthcare aide at the nursing home where Mary Pat works. Dreamy is one of the few Black people Mary Pat has direct contact with.
Mary Pat is tough as nails and does not take slack from anyone as she dives deep into her daughter's disappearance. There are the police investigating the subway crime and the local gang that runs Southie.
The ongoing Vietnam War impacts this community and the busing with the poor black and whites.
Mary Pat has been taught that the residents of Southie can count on only one another. But as her search for her daughter becomes increasingly desperate, she is met with silence from her community. She begins to question everything, especially the motivations of the local mobster Marty Butler and his crew, who claim to protect those in the neighborhood who pledge loyalty.
Mary Pat develops a friendship with Detective Bobby Coyne (investigating the subway crime) and hopes he can help find her daughter Jules since the Butler crew is of little help. Enjoyed the conversations between these two.
Ultimately, alone and with nothing left to lose, she is willing to fight anyone, confront anyone, even Butler himself, to uncover the truth. The take-no-prisoners hero of this novel is a mad, fired-up, middle-aged mom ready for battle.
Throughout the novel, real people and events make cameo appearances.
SMALL MERCIES is a powerful and critical novel that takes on one of the city's most turbulent moments. Lehane is a master storyteller who knows Boston.
A thought-provoking harrowing, riveting thriller blended with literary fiction—one of crime, complexities, hatred, racism, class, politics, and power. The author masterfully conveys how the past shapes the present.
In an author's note, Lehane recalls the night his father took a wrong turn driving his family home and ran into an anti-busing protest. Ted Kennedy and the judge who'd ordered the desegregation were being burned in effigy, and the furious crowd rocked the Lehanes' Chevy. "I'd never been so terrified in my life," Lehane writes.
Lehane tells the story of real people, embracing their failings and imperfections, offering a semblance of hope with a fitting title. I enjoyed the audiobook narrated by Robin Miles for an engaging performance and listening experience.
Blog Review posted @
JudithDColins.com
@JudithDCollins | #JDCMustReadBooks
Pub Date: April 25, 2023
My Rating: 5 Stars
April 2023 Must-Read Books -
A brand new Dennis Lehane novel, and what a treat it is.
It has all the Lehane markers - action, great dialogue, complex characters and, of course, the beating heart of working class Boston-Irish culture.
Here he tackles the Boston busing crisis of 1974 with a story surrounding two deaths on the eve of school integration. Tensions are high in the city and communities live on the edge of a race war.
It's all beautifully handled by the masterful Lehane. The main protagonists are sympathetic but occasionally repellant. The communities he depicts are a complicated mix of warm and harsh. The action and suspense dial up as the novel progresses.
It's all you could want from a thriller. -
I twisted my ankle while hiking a couple of days ago which left me housebound; thank goodness for Dennis Lehane for making an unpleasant situation almost enjoyable.
Set during the onset of school busing in Boston in 1974, this book follows Mary Pat Fennessy as she deals with being a single mother, working double shifts, and getting caught up in the politics that sweep South Boston in the days leading up to forced busing. Hers is not an easy life but she is a fighter--figuratively and literally--and is doing the best she can. When her teenage daughter Jules fails to come home after a night out with friends, Mary Pat sets out to find her and in doing so, comes up against members of the Irish mob and a police detective who is investigating the death of a young Black man who dies the same night Jules disappears. Are the two events linked? Mary Pat is suspicious but meets brick walls no matter where she turns. She is tenacious in her search for her daughter, however, and soon begins asking questions that ultimately jeopardize her own life.
This is an atmospheric novel that is both thought-provoking and suspenseful. Mary Pat is a character I rooted for even though she doesn't hesitate to resort to violence to get the answers she is seeking. She lives in a tough, close-knit community with rules that she breaks right and left in her quest to find her daughter, knowing full well that she will pay a price for her disobedience. This can be a tough book to read at times as it deals with racism and violence, but sometimes I like a book that takes me out of my comfort zone when done as excellently as Small Mercies. -
So many emotions after reading this. My first by this author. I loved his writing and his ability to make the characters and location so real. Intense and confronting I can see why he is a prolific author
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Another great book by Dennie Lehane!
Key points:
* This was an open, honest, and revealing look at the desegregation of schools in the south of Boston in 1974, along with the accompanying racism and hatred.
• A mystery surrounding the death and possible murder of a black teenager at a subway station.
* The disappearance of a seventeen year old Irish girl and her mother’s obsessive search for revenge.
This was a powerful yet distressing story to read, but also a hard book to put down because it was so well written. -
3.5
Review to follow -
My first read by Dennis Lehane and it was a thought provoking and slightly depressing read.
Set in 1970s Boston, it deals with racism(the upfront racist views of the characters are quite shocking), poverty, local gangsters, love and learned habits.
It’s a harrowing read with lots of racist language, it’s fair share of violence with a dabble of self reflection.
A very well told story with warts and all characters, despite its depressing tone I really enjoyed the tale. A snapshot into 70s America that felt more like the early 60s with its attitude(probably showing my naivety here with American history) it doesn’t pull any punches from the first page to last.
Thanks to the publisher for the ARC through Netgalley. -
It's been awhile, but turns out to be absolutely worth the wait! Just raw and real. Sometimes it was hard to get through because Lehane had my stomach twisting in that way a reader can only hope for. Mary Pat is a character I'll never forget. Must read!
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‘Small Mercies’ by Dennis Lehane has a lot of literary qualities! It qualifies as a high-end social problems novel, imho. But most readers, I suppose, will feel it fits more in the genre of crime fiction. It is that, too. And it’s a historical novel about the desegregation of Boston’s schools in 1974. And it’s a thriller! Gentle reader, the plot unfolds like a freight train starting slowly out of a wheelhouse, which then builds up speed until it is roaring like a rocket up into space! The questions answered are not about who is guilty (almost everyone is of something), but who survives!
I have copied the book blurb:
”In the summer of 1974 a heatwave blankets Boston and Mary Pat Fennessy is trying to stay one step ahead of the bill collectors. Mary Pat has lived her entire life in the housing projects of “Southie,” the Irish American enclave that stubbornly adheres to old tradition and stands proudly apart.
One night Mary Pat’s teenage daughter Jules stays out late and doesn’t come home. That same evening, a young Black man is found dead, struck by a subway train under mysterious circumstances. The two events seem unconnected. But Mary Pat, propelled by a desperate search for her missing daughter, begins turning over stones best left untouched—asking questions that bother Marty Butler, chieftain of the Irish mob, and the men who work for him, men who don’t take kindly to any threat to their business.
Set against the hot, tumultuous months when the city’s desegregation of its public schools exploded in violence, Small Mercies is a superb thriller, a brutal depiction of criminality and power, and an unflinching portrait of the dark heart of American racism. It is a mesmerizing and wrenching work that only Dennis Lehane could write.”
Whoever wrote the book blurb nails it. I highly recommend the book! It is a wonderful read for the beach if you enjoy gritty, dark noir crime fiction similar to the ones James Ellroy writes, only with more coherence than how Ellroy writes.
