Mercy - Softcover

York, Alissa

Softcover

ISBN 10: 067931217X ISBN 13: 9780679312178

Publisher: Vintage Canada, 2003

Synopsis

Award-winning author Alissa York’s first novel is a haunting and masterful exploration of how passions of the spirit and the flesh can overwhelm us, and even come to inhabit the ground beneath our feet. Divided into two parts, Mercy pairs a single year in the past with a single night in the present, as they unfold in the town of Mercy, Manitoba, and in the neighbouring black spruce bog.

In 1948, a dedicated priest named August Day arrives in Mercy to take over from Father Rock, who has passed away. Although Father Day is young, the bishop has seen fit to let him take over the parish, and August feels he is fulfilling his years of devotion, study and struggle -- at last being able to serve God as alter Christus, or another Christ. The first service he is to perform in his new church is the marriage of Thomas Rose, the town butcher, to Mathilda Nickels, the orphaned niece of the church housekeeper.

Thomas Rose is a good man who waited years to express his love for Mathilda. And when Mathilda accepted his proposal, he was sure that their life together would bring them both joy, though in truth he knew little about his betrothed. Mathilda grew up in a Catholic orphanage and has since been living with her aunt Vera at St. Mary’s; she has not explored the world beyond the realm of her religious devotion, and approaches her wedding day with a mix of fear and dread. But when her eyes meet those of Father Day at the ceremony, Thomas seems to dissolve beside her and she feels physical passion for the first time in her life. As of that moment, August and Mathilda will only have eyes, and hearts, for each other.

Over the coming weeks, the young bride spends more and more time at St. Mary’s, caring for her ailing aunt and taking over the woman’s cleaning duties, but also savouring her brief moments with Father Day. Her marriage remains unconsummated, and her lust for the priest grows to fever pitch, as does his for her -- fuelled not only by the secrets they share in the confessional, but by the fiery text of the Song of Songs. When they do unite, it seems to mark the end of their secret relationship... but the child Mathilda carries away from the encounter assures us their story is not over. Rather, it is yet another thread to add to the tapestry of unspoken stories underpinning Mercy itself, and one that will affect the town’s psyche for decades to come.

Half a century later, another sort of preacher comes to Mercy -- a womanizing widower who wants to develop the black spruce bog on the edge of town and build a religious camp. Reverend Carl Mann is fairly confident of success, having taken up with Mayor Lavinia Wylie, but worries about the well-publicized protests of a woman known as Bog Mary, who has lived her entire life in the heart of the bog. He heads off to confront her and ends up lost and hurt, but Mary uses her natural remedies and knowledge to heal not only his wounds but his broken spirit.

A dark yet compassionate novel, Mercy rivals the fiction debuts of Anne Michaels, Ann-Marie MacDonald and Gail Anderson-Dargatz. Alissa York brings to life a tale of misguided love and damaged souls with language of incredible clarity and intensity.

About this title

Review:

The course of true love never did run smooth, but in Alissa York's novel Mercy love often strikes its lonely, flawed characters with devastating results. The novel's narrative is divided between the stories of two priests, separated by 50 years, and their respective love affairs in a small Manitoba town, appropriately called Mercy. The novel opens in 1948 when the butcher Thomas Rose prepares to kill a cow. (Some of the tenderest moments in the novel concern Thomas butchering an animal.) Thomas falls in love with the orphan Mathilda, whose body makes him think of the lovely carcasses of does. Meanwhile, Mathilda falls in love with Father August Day, whom she first sees when he weds her to Thomas, and an illicit love affair ensues between the two. The second part of the novel jumps forward five decades to focus on another womanising priest, named Carl, who visits Mercy with the aim of developing its bog area into a Christian camp. The priest attempts to penetrate the bog to confront Mary, the woman who lives there. An accident forces him to remain in her care while he heals, but the experience helps him regain more than just his sight. Redemption seems possible if not necessarily convincing.

The chapters' titles set the tone by alternating terms that could be found in a butchering manual with Latin religious phrases. York's captivating, poetic prose repeatedly reminds us that her characters are creatures of flesh, with all the frailty that derives from it. For example, Thomas's face is described as "an open rib cage, displaying his ardent heart". The key to the novel can be found in the bog--an untamed wilderness on the outskirts of Mercy that surely symbolises the town's conscience. --Leah Eichler, Amazon.ca

About the Author:

Alissa York was born in 1970, in Athabasca, Alberta, to Australian immigrant parents. There, Alissa’s father taught high school English and outdoor education, and her mother taught part-time at the local elementary school and studied creative writing at the University of Alberta. Alissa has commented, “My imprint from that time is incredibly strong... I’m drawn to writing about people with their insides showing. There’s a boiling down of human experience in small towns.” In 1977, the family moved to Victoria, British Columbia. A decade later, Alissa graduated from high school and moved to Toronto, then on to Montreal, where she studied English Literature at McGill University.

After Alissa met her partner, writer/filmmaker Clive Holden, the couple travelled all over Canada, living i

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage Canada
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 067931217X
• ISBN 13: 9780679312178
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 344