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Small Mercies
- Author
- Dennis Lehane
- Narrator
- Regina Reagan
- Publisher
- Little, Brown Book Group
- Publish Date
- 25 April 2023
- Run Time
- 9 hours 6 minutes
- Format
- Audiobook
- Genre
- Crime and / or mystery fiction, Crime and mystery: hard-boiled crime, noir fiction, Fiction: literary and general non-genre
- Rating
- 5.0 (1 review)
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What to expect
'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 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.
Please be aware that this audiobook covers themes of racism and abuse, using language which may cause offence to others if you're listening in public.
Critics Review
-
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
-
Dennis Lehane, the author of Mystic River, uses Mary Pat's search for answers to illuminate wider issues of racial tension, drug use and sexual inequality that still plague America. His real accomplishment, though, is his portrait of a mother both "irretrievably broken and wholly unbreakable", one he draws without smoothing over Mary Pat's own flaws and blinkered attitudes. You'll be lucky if you read a more engaging novel this year
The Times, April 2023 Thriller of the Month
-
A brutal, thrilling and relentlessly clear-eyed portrait of a city riven by fear and hatred
Mail on Sunday
-
Lehane's latest is a multifaceted affair, delivering an unsentimental account of a city at war with itself and a nuanced investigation of racism, class and cultural identity. Fundamentally, however, it's a powerful story of a woman who has stripped of everything she holds dear and who, with nothing left to lose, has nothing left to fear...Mary Pat Fennessy might be Dennis Lehane's single greatest creation'
Irish Times
See more reviews See fewer reviews
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Aficionados argue about who currently inhabits the top tier of American crime fiction...two names jostle for pole position: Dennis Lehane and Don Winslow. Both writers provide a perfect balance of detailed characterisation and state-of-the-nation underpinnings in their work...Lehane has said that his work is always about hope, however dark the scenarios, and that quality shines throughout this ambitious and multi-layered novel
Financial Times
-
'Small Mercies is thought provoking, engaging, enraging, and can't-put-it-down entertainment'
Stephen King
-
Small Mercies is a jaw-dropping thriller, set in the fury of Boston's 1974 school-desegregation crisis, and propelled by a hell-bent woman who's impossible to ignore. Thought-provoking and heart-thumping, it's a resonant, unflinching story written by a novelist who is simply one of the best around
Gillian Flynn
-
Lehane is now well established as one of America's finest crime writers, who superbly blends uncompromising social history with uncompromising tales of what people driven to the limit will do. As ever, Small Mercies is populated with a wide-ranging collection of unforgettable people
Reader's Digest
-
Excellent and unflinching... [Small Mercies] has all the hallmarks of Lehane at his best: a propulsive plot, a perfectly drawn cast of working-class Boston Irish characters, razor-sharp wit and a pervasive darkness through which occasional glimmers of hope peek out like snowdrops in early spring
New York Times Book Review
-
A truly exciting, engaging and enraging narrative...Lehane's ear for dialogue and emotion is incisive so all the characters come alive by deft turns of phrase and mannerism. There is wit that keeps the novel's dark tragedy and violence from overpowering the reader. Historical detail is realised with an uncommon vibrancy. Clipped short chapters are not written but carved, so there is not one superfluous word. Lehane has considered every sentence...This is Dennis Lehane at the height of his writing powers; for to miss this novel would be unforgivable
Shots Mag
-
[A] ferocious crime novel... Land[s] like a fist to the solar plexus... Full of booby traps, but the metaphorical kind that blow up futures instead of limbs... [As] in the best mysteries, the detective herself is cracked open and remade
New Yorker
-
Beautiful. I was blown away by how Dennis Lehane was able to bring such a deeply unfamiliar world into my heart. Small Mercies is hilarious and heartbreaking, infuriating and unforgettable
Jacqueline Woodson
-
Without flinching, Dennis Lehane shines a lantern on a dark story, one the reader will not forget
James Lee Burke
-
Dennis Lehane peels back the layers of his characters like a sculptor finding the face of an angel in a block of stone. By a true master at the top of his game, Small Mercies is vintage Lehane. Beautiful, brutal, lyrical and blisteringly honest. Not to be missed
S.A. Cosby, author of Blacktop Wasteland and Razorblade Tears
-
Dennis Lehane is a supernova and this is a novel that will throw your entire goddamn solar system out of alignment. Lehane has gone from strength to strength but never has he been more truthful, more heartbreaking, more essential. In the midst of our racial nightmare Small Mercies asks some of the only questions that matter: 'What's gonna change? When's it gonna change? Where's it gonna change? How's it gonna change?' This book is impossible to put down and its dark radiances will stay with you a long, long time
Junot Díaz, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of This Is How You Lose Her
-
This taut, gripping mystery is also a novel of soul-searching, for the author and reader alike
Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
-
Powerful, unforgettable...[a] remarkable novel about racism, violence, and parental vengeance
Library Journal (starred review)
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A complex, multidimensional tragedy of epic proportions . . . Lehane straddles the line between historical fiction and thriller as dexterously as anyone, and this is his best work so far
Booklist (starred review)
-
One of the great diabolical thriller kings
New York Times
-
I would follow Dennis Lehane anywhere
Lee Child
-
Lehane writes expert, compelling thrillers that dive into mysteries much more universal and more urgent than just a whodunit; he's one of the game changers who smashed the imagined boundary between genre and literature, proving that we can have the best of both at once
Tana French
-
His ability to create crystal clear portraits of humanity and then place them in the darker side of life is a writer's true gift
USA Today
User Reviews
Book 5.0
Narration 5.0
-
5.0 5.0
The book is set in south Boston in 1974. Nixon is three weeks resigned, and a judicial decision to bus white students from there to the predominantly black schools of the northern suburbs and vice versa is about to be implemented.
17-y-o girl Jules (Irish) goes missing and her mother, Mary Pat, searches for her. Over that same weekend Augie, a 20-y-o black man and son of a work colleague of Mary Pat’s, is found dead under a railway platform. He is in the white neighbourhood. Why? And is there a connection between his death and Jules’ disappearance? Mary Pat is the unlikeliest of detectives. Is that what she will become as the story develops?
Lehane’s descriptions of things like Mary Pat’s aging car are evocative. But his great strength here is dialogue - so well capturing people in dialogue and in thought, such as when Mary Pat recalls a moment from the day she’d last seen her daughter Jules: “They'd been walking along Old Colony, and Jules had spiraled into that weird dark mood which grew so exasperating that Mary Pat had asked her if she was PMSing. To which Jules replied: “No, Ma. Definitely no.”
“She was trying to tell me,” Mary Pat thinks. “And I couldn't hear.”
I enjoyed and was moved by (Boston Police Detective) Bobby’s first date (not with Mary Pat) and the repartee between the two, their shyness and brittle boldness so well captured.
I was quickly and totally invested in this audiobook and keen to see how it resolves Jules’ disappearance and Augie’s death amidst this very Boston Irish milieu, so wonderfully presented.
Great narration also.
I think how good that Lehane is prolific and I thank my friend for the recommendation.StanRo 2023-05-05
Details
- Author
- Dennis Lehane
- Narrator
- Regina Reagan
- Duration
- 9 hours 6 minutes
- Release Date
- 25 April 2023
- ISBN
- 9781405558150
- Format
- Audiobook
- Publisher
- Little, Brown Book Group
- Genre
- Crime and / or mystery fiction, Crime and mystery: hard-boiled crime, noir fiction, Fiction: literary and general non-genre
- Rating
- 5.0(1 review)
- Narration
- 5.0(1 review)
Synopsis
'You'll be lucky if you read a more engaging novel this year' The Times Thriller of the Month April 2023'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 FlynnNew 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 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.Please be aware that this audiobook covers themes of racism and abuse, using language which may cause offence to others if you're listening in public.
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