Mercy Among The Children

This book keeps you engrossed in the story from beginning to end. You get extremely frustrated with the main character and experience heartbreak for others more than once. I've recommended this book to countless people and everyone has loved it in spite of the rather dark emotions it envokes.

I picked up this book because I had to read something for my English class and I must say, its extraordinary.
My expecatations for this novel were low; restricted to limited Canadian authors in my school library made me think of this novel as juvenile. I was greatly mistaken.

The characters contained so much depth. "Sydney Henderson is a passive man" is an understatement. He's a pushover to the last degree. The first half of the novel focuses on him and his morals and ideals in life. You can't help but think "He's a complete coward" at some point in the novel.
His son Lyle, can't disagree more with his father. He rebels, and discards his father's teachings.

This novel shows the two sides of man and how each and every one of us has the ability to do the right thing but are unable to. Richards presents the story in the most beautiful way. It has been a long time since I last cried while reading.
The only thing I disliked was the underlining of religious preaching in his texts which made me pull away slightly.
I dont reccomend this to anyone simply because it is a heavy read and taxing on the heart.

Another Canada Reads 2009 contender (I recently blogged about another one called The Outlander) that I read for my book club. But unlike The Outlander, I did not care for this one.

Taking place in rural New Brunswick during the 1980's and 90's, the story follows the Henderson family as they eke out a meager living from trapping and working for the local bigwig, Leo McVicer. Sidney Henderson and Connie Devlin were twelve when they were shoveling snow off the roof of the local church and began arguing and the ensuing fight resulted in Connie falling and Sydney thinking that he's dead. He wasn't but in the time it took for Sydney to realize Connie was okay, Sydney promised God that he would never do another thing to harm another human. Making that promise was much harder to live with than it seemed at the time. The rest of the book deals with the challenges Sydney, his wife and children face as they deal with the repercussions of this oath.

I read this novel for my book club - there's no way I'd have finished it otherwise. It's so bleak - it's worse than depressing. I can take the poverty, but the child abuse and neglect, no. The characters were at various times cowardly, weak-kneed, fundamentally evil, selfish, spineless, pathetic, helpless, etc. The few that did do something kind for another person seemed to be motivated by guilt rather than any altruistic sensibility. And really, do bad things actually happen that often to people or are they offset even occasionally by good things?

This book won the Giller Prize in 2000. Those judges must love wallowing in misery. Don't get me wrong - the writing is good and the story is told well. But it's like constantly picking the scab from a wound - it never gets better and sometimes even becomes infected, but you can't stop picking even if it's painful. Well, this whole book was one gaping wound. But hey, some people just love this kind of book - I'm just not one of them.

This is the first book by David Adams Richards that I have read - an oversight that I intend to rectify in short order. The story line and various characters depict several of kinds of love: agape, storag, eros and philia. Furthermore, important issues of ethics and moral conduct are addressed. Responsibility of how one deals with various moral and ethical codes and their conflict is heartwarmingly addressed. Often times, at life's crossroads, we take easy routes; Sydney Henderson, on the other hand opts for the morally responsible and correct choices. Sydney suspects that the cost of his actions might end up costing him dearly, yet he perceivers, for he remains guilt free and secure in the knowledge that he does right and honourable things/deeds. His family too inherits this disposition; save his son Lyle.
Lyle's actions and decisions offer a contrast to what Sydney might have done.

Mr. Richards has managed to sound Maritime's chilling, winter appealing and inviting in its own right. His description has convinced me to go and visit Miramichi.

Thank you Sir (not David Scone) for satiating my great appetite for good books. I shall use the book for my course work.