An Expansive Tale of Regret and Renewal
“I ran out on my friend when he was dying,” recalls Ivan, the first character we meet in Mercy, the expansive, affecting new novel by award-winning author Joan Silber (Counterpoint Press, $27). “I left him there, unattended, to save myself. Who does that?” The novel’s central moment is when Ivan, as a young man in 1970s New York, abandons his best friend Eddie after a heroin overdose, leaving him slumped in a chair in the ER. Ivan feels the weight of remorse throughout his life, and he’s not the only one. In her signature style, Silber introduces readers to a cast of characters who are connected to—and impacted by—Ivan’s decision on that chaotic night.
Using a technique she has perfected in her most recent books, Secrets of Happiness, Improvement, and Fools, Silber illustrates how one person’s actions reverberate across decades and oceans. In this time-traveling, globe-trotting tale, each chapter is a linked story—with a minor character in one becoming the central figure in the next. In Ivan’s chapter, we meet Eddie’s girlfriend Ginger, an aspiring actress who was there the night of the overdose. She narrates the next chapter—except now, she’s an older woman, reflecting back on her relationships, family life, and journey to stardom. The third narrator is Cara, the young girl seated next to Eddie in the ER after breaking her leg. Nini, Cara’s friend, takes center stage in the fourth chapter, followed by Cara’s daughter, Isabel. Like a skipping stone cast across the water, we see the ripple effect of a single act that binds these individuals together.
Silber’s stories and characters are also linked thematically. Silber, who identifies as Jewish, has long been interested in Buddhist ideas around empathy and impermanence—giving her a lens to explore some of life’s spiritual questions. How does one seek and offer forgiveness? How do we cope with loss? What is the purpose of prayer? Does fate exist?
Her characters’ quests to answer these questions take them on journeys that are both physical and psychological. Some seek relief—another manifestation of “mercy”—in the form of drugs and sex. Others uproot themselves or travel to far parts of the world. Nini, for instance, conducts her anthropology fieldwork with an indigenous group in Thailand. “It was an extraordinary thing to be helped by these women,” she says when villagers offer her opium to ease the pain of an injury, “to be brought these tiny wads of sap from their store of mercy.” Years later, on the brink of death, she recalls “those nimble, kind women with their lantern and the pipe.” She wishes her morphine pump were not set to a limit, yet acknowledges, “There was only so much mercy in the world.” Silber suggests that mercy is scarce, but our hunger for it—whether in the form of forgiveness, compassion, or release— unites us all.
This interconnectedness builds as the narrative spins outward, gathering voices and plotlines along the way. At a launch event for Mercy, Silber described this structure as an “urban form,” illuminating how city dwellers’ lives intersect. Fittingly, the novel ends where it began—in New York City, where countless stories unfold at once. Silber returns us to the gritty, raucous East Village of the 1970s to reveal what really happened the night of Ivan’s selfish choice. In doing so, she brings the novel full circle, weaving its disparate threads into a cohesive whole. What linger is the assurance of a master storyteller whose generosity toward even her most flawed characters suggests that mercy may be more abundant than we think.
Kate Schmier is a writer from Metro Detroit who lives in New York City.
