This is my second Dennis Lehane book. I read the last one a number of years ago and remember it as a gritty story set in Boston and in particular, in the low socio-economic areas with predominantly Irish families. Small Mercies was the choice for his month for one of my bookgroups. Again, it was a gritty story in the sense that it is a no-holds-barred telling of life as it was in the community of Commonwealth in Boston in 1974. The setting is established evocatively- it\u2019s a sweltering summer with power outages making difficult lives even more insufferable. We meet Mary Pat and her family and neighbours on the eve of the start of \u201cbusing\u201d. This was when African American children were bussed in to attend \u201cwhite schools\u201d in some areas of Boston. The community is unhappy about this and is organising a protest. There are two main story threads- one involving the police investigation into a black American teenager\u2019s death on the nearby railway lines, and the other revolving around Mary Pat\u2019s teenage daughter. We also get some insight into the Irish \u201cmafia\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As you can probably gather, many characters in this book are tough and pretty unlikeable. They have hard lives and unforgiving attitudes. There is a lot of violence and racism throughout the story. There is also hard drug use. I feel, however, that Lehane works hard to dig deep and uncover some of the sources of the hate and despair in this community. The story moves along well and is engaging. I can imagine it being turned into a movie like another of his books, Mystic River.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Small Mercies is very different to the books I have been reading recently and I think this is a good thing. It\u2019s a powerful story and that keeps you on the edge of your seat and I think it will provoke a lot of good discussion at our next bookgroup meeting!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This is my second Dennis Lehane book. I read the last one a number of years ago and remember it as a gritty story set …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":3899,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_wpcom_ai_launchpad_first_post":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\n\n{excerpt}\n\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[23],"tags":[447,510,25,511],"class_list":["post-3898","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-review","tag-book-review","tag-dennis-lehane","tag-helen-jahn","tag-small-mercies"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pff1uY-10S","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":4144,"url":"https:\/\/mountainashchapter.com.au\/?p=4144","url_meta":{"origin":3898,"position":0},"title":"The Eleventh Floor by Kylie Orr","author":"Kylie Eklund-Denman","date":"February 6, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"Kylie Orr is a local author who writes domestic suspense. 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