Book Review: Mercy by Bill Littlefield

Author Bill Littlefield is the retired host of Boston’s long-running public radio show about sports, “It’s Only a Game.” I haven’t read any of his previously published books (some written for children), but I was intrigued when I saw the offer of a pre-pub copy on LibraryThing. Both because of the Massachusetts setting, and because it WASN’T about sports. Mercy is the author’s third novel.

Read an excerpt of Mercy and listen to a conversation with author Bill Littlefield and WBUR’s Here & Now host Robin Young here:
https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2022/08/03/mercy-bill-littlefield

Mercy is made up almost entirely of snippets of conversations – between spouses, neighbors, friends, and a pair of Boston gangsters – and unspoken thoughts, mostly musing reflections, sparked by events or something someone else says. The sparse chapters (more like vignettes) may take a little getting used to, especially for readers who like straightforward narratives. But have patience, gentle reader! Connections gradually emerge and the story – or, rather, multiple stories – comes together.

Mercy opens with a first-person narrator, Jack, a neighborhood family man, prone to introspection, and we might think “Ah, this is the author speaking through this character.” But the novel quickly and frequently shifts into other voices and perspective, giving glimpses into the lives and thoughts of other characters. One whole chapter is given to a little girl in the neighborhood named Libby, who gazes out from her upstairs bedroom window, very early on a summer morning, like a god or omniscient narrator.

Although how the various characters are connected to each other is obscure at first, they all have some connection to notorious crime boss Arthur Baladino, a Whitey Bulger-like gangster. Mercy is set in the suburban, middle-class neighborhood where Baladino, nearing death, has been released from a life sentence and allowed to come home to die. Neighbors and local journalists may wonder why a violent criminal like Baladino – a mobster not known for showing mercy to his victims – was granted the mercy of dying at home instead of remaining locked behind bars, but it remains speculation. No one knows for sure.

The house where Baladino’s reclusive wife where lived while her husband was in prison looms in the neighbors’ collective imagination. How must she feel having a convicted murder for a husband? Will having a convicted murderer living among them put neighborhood families in danger? How will it affect property values?

But the neighbors – even little Libby – are busy with their own lives, their own concerns. Momentous events – scandals, divorces – have happened in the neighborhood before; life goes on. Giving equal weight to everyone’s story regardless of age, class, gender, or moral standing, the author nudges readers to think about the lives of all the people in the story and how they played the hands they had been dealt.

Responsible for countless deaths, Baladino is a shadowy presence in the story, still casting an influence over other people’s lives even when in prison, even when on the verge of death…even after death. Readers come to know Baladino only secondhand – from stories others tell about him or from interviews he gives to reporters, all his answers suspect.

According to the author in the radio interview I linked to above, when he was first working on several vignette-like chapters at once, he wasn’t even sure they were chapters – thinking they might be standalone short stories instead. Until he saw a theme emerging — his characters were all in need of forgiveness, and “needed to learn how to forgive themselves.”

Although events do happen in Mercy – life goes on – the storyline takes a backseat to the ruminations of the book’s characters. Don’t read Mercy for the suspense (though there is some.) or the sports (only one sports metaphor – “The best team doesn’t always win.”) Read it for the multifaceted human characters in need of forgiveness and forgiving, and the thread of human connection binding them together, however different the lives they lead.

Disclaimer: I received a free, digital advanced reading copy of this book from the publisher through LibraryThing’s Early Reviewer program in exchange for an unbiased review.