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.
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