Mercy Among the Children

"Lyle Henderson, a rough-looking 25-year-old former resident of the Stumps, in Miramichi, New Brunswick, appears suddenly at the apartment of Terrieux, a retired police officer, who years before, worked in Lyle’s home town. During his tenure there, Terrieux had saved a boy, Mat Pit, from drowning. An heroic act in itself, its consequences, as Lyle explains, were not universally positive. For Mat Pit went on to play out his role as the negative centre of a wheel of fortune whose radiating spokes touched many lives in the Stumps, none more negatively than Sydney Henderson’s, Lyle’s father. In the process of explaining the consequences of Mat Pit’s rescued life, Lyle tells the story of his father’s own heartbreaking struggle to live truthfully and non-violently, of a childhood pact with God, and its toll, and eventual implacable resolution. And, on a different order of magnitude, the justness of it all."

"Sydney’s life, as the son of an occasionally violent, abusive drunk and ne’er-do-well is, until the age of 12, a pretty straightforward, if heartrending, hard-luck story. At that point, however, in a dispute over a molasses sandwich, he pushes another boy off a roof. Connie Devlin, the boy in question, falls 50 feet, and Sydney, staring at his motionless form, fears he is dead. In an act of rebellion against his birthright of violence and anger he vows to God that if Connie’s life is spared he will never again raise his hand or voice to hurt another person. The terms of this agreement will eventually cost Sydney his life. No sooner has he made it though, than Connie cracks a smile, rises up, and runs away laughing.

Despite the obvious prank, Sydney insists on honouring his vow. A brilliant, self-taught scholar, who at the age of fifteen had read Stendahl and Proust, he had come to see this path as the only way out of his family’s destructive past. Unfortunately, as an occupant of one of the lower rungs of Stumps society, physical and mental aggression are almost essential acts of self-preservation for him.

Sydney’s perceived passivity sentences him and his family to suffer endlessly from what Lyle identifies as, “the callous and chronic idiocy of others.” The children are ostracized and tormented. The family endures desperate poverty, physical bullying, condescension and false accusations of thievery, sabotage, pedophilia and even murder.

People, particularly Mat Pit, bend the truth of Sydney existence, because it’s undefended, into any configuration that best suits their situation. Lyle, in a frustrated attempt defend his family when it seems his father won’t, is seduced by the easy glamour of violence, falls in with Mat Pit, and seems well on his way to becoming just another small town thug heading for a bad end. Both Sydney and his wife Elly, die early, tragic deaths. Only Autumn, their daughter, manages to transcend her circumstances, and go on to lead the sort of life that reaps the rewards of Sydney’s sacrifice."

"It is regarding Sydney, and his behaviour, that reader opinion tends to diverge most. Those who dislike the book, express anger and frustration with his refusal to defend himself, and his family. The family’s trials, detractors complain, are too big and too many, Sydney’s behaviour incomprehensible, the story too relentlessly dark. I sometimes suspect that those who insist on this interpretation have not finished the book. Certainly, I think most readers follow, as I did, much the same journey as Lyle — experience his bewilderment, frustration, and sense of betrayal and anger. Along the way, uncomfortable questions inevitably arise. Sydney’s treatment by his town forces one to wonder just how welcome truth is, really, in our world, how compatible with our human natures?  Readers might also rightfully ask, though, “Is it a sin to be too good?” If, like Sydney, we preserve our integrity at great cost to others? Yet Lyle, in the end, comes to believe, of his father, that “no man was essentially greater” and tells Terrieux, that in spite of everything 'overall, it has been a life of joy.'"

Excerpted from:  http://kerryoncanlit.wordpress.com/past-reviews-1998-%E2%80%94%C2%A02003/richards-david-adams-mercy-among-the-children/

0
No votes yet
Author(s): 
David Adams Richards
Book type: 
Country: 
Canada