Small Mercies: 'can't-put-it-down entertainment' Stephen King

Small Mercies is a 2023 novel by Dennis Lehane that explores revenge, family love, festering hate, and insidious power during a tumultuous episode in Boston's history. The book is a masterly psychological study of racism and was selected as a Barack Obama Summer Reading Pick.

Format: Hardback
Length: 320 pages
Publication date: 25 April 2023
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

A BARACK OBAMA SUMMER READING PICK 2023




You'll be lucky if you read a more engaging novel this year. The Times, Thriller of the Month, April 2023. At the heart of the book is a masterly psychological study of racism. Lehane (who was a writer on The Wire) provides top-notch dialogue, an absorbing mystery, and an evocation of a historical moment foreshadowing America's 21st-century ethnic divide. Sunday Times, Thriller of the Month. Small Mercies is thought-provoking, engaging, enraging, and can't-put-it-down entertainment. Stephen King. A jaw-dropping thriller... a resonant, unflinching story written by a novelist who is simply one of the best around. Gillian Flynn. New York Times bestselling author Dennis Lehane returns with a masterpiece to rival Mystic River - an all-consuming tale of revenge, family love, festering hate, and insidious power, set against one of the most tumultuous episodes in Boston's history.




Mrs. Fennessy, please go home. And do what? Whatever you do when you're home. And then what? Get up the next day and do it again. She shakes her head. That's not living. It is if you can find the small blessings. She smiles, but her eyes shine with agony. All my small blessings are gone. In the summer of 1974, a heatwave blankets Boston, and Mary Pat Fennessey 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 as Mary Pat investigates the death of the young Black man, she uncovers a web of secrets and lies that connects her daughter to the victim and the powerful community of Southie. As she digs deeper, Mary Pat realizes that the heatwave is not just a physical phenomenon but a metaphor for the simmering tensions and conflicts that have been brewing in Boston for decades. Small Mercies is a powerful and timely novel that explores the complexities of race, class, and power in a city that is still grappling with its past. It is a story of resilience, hope, and the human spirit in the face of adversity.

Weight: 552g
Dimension: 162 x 241 x 34 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780349145754