“Mercy Among the Children” by David Adams Richards

Probably not a book I would have bought up on my own – my grandma sent it too me on my birthday and six months later finally I picked it up. The first thing to catch my eye was a review by the Christian Science Monitor which said:

Mercy Among the Children is a stunning novel by David Adams Richards. It has nothing to do with international conflict, but a nation at war should stare into its flame … There’s light here for anyone who can stand the considerable heat he generates. Told with racing suspense and a style that swings between gritty realism and Old Testament myth, Mercy Among the Children is a bitter antidote to the proud slogans of war between neighbors or nations. Here is the reason to read fiction.

It’s not a fun book to read. Richards leaves you with such an intense feeling of despair that you could easily catch yourself thinking, ‘what a waste of a read if that’s how it turns out.’

“What a waste,” however is exactly what the book hopes to convey. I believe Richards sympathizes with human beings whom he views as weak. While every Israeli and Palestinian, for example, can objectively se their conflict has a hopeless waste, few are willing to subjectively admit fault or make concessions. The author looks deeply into the psyches of his characters to try and figure out why.

The 370 page novel is written from the perspective of Lyle Henderson, the oldest and angriest sibling of his father Sidney, who is the laughing stock of the town. Sidney had always been the outcast in his small rural Canadian town and is chastised for spending his money on Camus and Dostoevsky novels rather than liquor and beer. He is furthermore ostracized because of his successful courting of the town’s prettiest bachelorette, Elly.

Sidney is a pacifist and time after time takes blame for the vicious actions and crimes of others in the town he has known his whole life. Sidney never protests the accusations against him, telling Lyle that a person only hurts himself when he/she tries to hurt someone else. He explains to his son, quoting Camus, that those who have wrongly accused him are suffering more than he himself is.

Lyle, an adolescent for most of the novel, sees the world from a different perspective. Because of his father he is an outcast at school. His younger sister, Autumn – an albino who he tries to protect – is also an outcast and taken advantage of by pubescent boys while walking home froms school. Lyle endures all of this until he is unwilling to watch it continue in endless cycle.

Then, angry with the world, he sets his eyes on revenge. It becomes his raison d’etre – to avenge those who were cruel to his family. In the end though (of course) it was his father and Camus who turned out to be right. When you seek harm on others, in the long run, you end up hurting yourself more.

If only our governments could learn this. Unfortunately, when our war mongering leaders choose to attack others rather than looking for all peaceful alternatives, they risk not their own lives, but young men and women who have enlisted in the military (many simply looking for tuition money).

Here is a picture I recently found on the net – a photo collage of all the soldiers who, so far, have died in Iraq.