August 21, 2001
Doubleday Canada
Canadian Author
0385259956
9780385259958
From the Publisher
Mercy Among the Children received effusive praise
from the critics, was nominated for a Governor General's Award and
won the Giller Prize. It was named one of 2000's best books, became
a national bestseller in hardcover for months, and would be
published in the US and UK. It is seen, however, as being at odds
with literary fashion for concerning itself with good and evil and
the human freedom to choose between them - an approach that puts
Richards, as Maclean's magazine says, firmly in the
tradition of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. Author Wayne Johnston recounts
hearing Richards read in 1983 and being struck by his unqualified
love for every one of his characters, even though "it was not then
fashionable to love your characters". Pottersfield
Portfolio editor Tony Tremblay calls Richards the most
misunderstood Canadian writer of the century, and a "great
moralist", comparing him to Morley Callaghan, Kafka and
Melville.
As a boy, Sydney Henderson thinks he has killed Connie Devlin when
he pushes him from a roof for stealing his sandwich. He vows to God
he will never again harm another if Connie survives. Connie walks
away, laughing, and Sydney embarks upon a life of self-immolating
goodness. In spite of having educated himself with such classics as
Tolstoy and Marcus Aurelius, he is not taken seriously enough to
enter university because of his background of dire poverty and
abuse, which leads everyone to expect the worst of him. His saintly
generosity of spirit is treated with suspicion and contempt,
especially when he manages to win the love of beautiful Elly.
Unwilling to harm another in thought or deed, or to defend himself
against false accusations, he is exploited and tormented by others
in this rural community, and finally implicated in the death of a
19-year-old boy.
Lyle Henderson knows his father is innocent, but is angry that the
family has been ridiculed for years, and that his mother and sister
suffer for it. He feels betrayed by his father's passivity in the
face of one blow after another, and unable to accept his belief in
long-term salvation. Unlike his father, he cannot believe that evil
will be punished in the end. While his father turns the other
cheek, Lyle decides the right way is in fighting, and embarks on a
morally empty life of stealing, drinking and violence.
A compassionate, powerful story of humanity confronting inhumanity,
it is a culmination of Richards' last seven books, beginning with
Road to the Stilt House. It takes place in New
Brunswick's Miramichi Valley, like all of his novels so far, which
has led some urban critics to misjudge his work as regional - a
criticism leveled at Thomas Hardy, Joseph Conrad and Emily Bronte
in their own day. Like his literary heroes, Richards aims to evoke
universal human struggles through his depiction of the events of a
small, rural place, where one person's actions impact inevitably on
others in a tragic web of interconnectedness. The setting is
extremely important in Richards' work, "because the characters come
from the soil"; but as British Columbia author Jack Hodgins once
told Richards, "every character you talk about is a character I''ve
met here in Campbell River".
From the Jacket
Believing he may have accidentally killed a friend, Sydney
Henderson makes a pact with God. If God will spare the boy's life,
Sydney will never again harm another human being.
In the years that follow, the self-educated, brilliant and now
almost pathologically gentle Sydney holds true to his promise. Yet
others in the small rural community in New Brunswick view Sydney's
pacifism as an opportunity to exploit and torment the defenseless
Hendersons. Tragedy strikes when a small boy dies as a result of an
act of sabotage and revenge gone horribly wrong. It is a death for
which Sydney is blamed. Guilty only of being different, Sydney
refuses to defend himself and his family. Raised on the books his
father has long collected, Sydney's son Lyle shares a deep respect
for the power of words. But when he is forced to watch his family
ridiculed and attacked, Lyle turns his back on God and literature,
and adopts an aggressive strategy for protecting his mother, sister
and brother. In the end it is Lyle who must decide what legacy his
family's tragedy will hold. Amid the squalor of their lives, Sydney
and Lyle demonstrate how humanity faces inhumanity, how lies and
disappointments cannot and will never destroy truth or human
greatness.
Written with the characteristic control, intelligence and
compassion for which Richards has been widely acclaimed, Mercy
Among the Children is a story set in a particular time and
place, yet its message is universal.
About the Author
David Adams Richards was born in 1950 in Newcastle, New Brunswick,
the third of six children in a working-class family. Though he
didn't grow up as poor as Lyle, he knew something about feeling
different in a rural community, having a "townie" father who owned
a movie theatre and suffered from narcolepsy. He found his calling
at the age of fourteen, after reading Oliver
Twist, and embarked on a life of extraordinary purpose,
which he says didn't help the family finances: "Sometimes…I thought
it would be better if I were a plumber, but I wouldn't be very
good."
He studied literature at St. Thomas University in Fredericton, and
while working on a second novel he attended an informal weekly
writers workshop, known as the Ice House Gang for the converted
storage room where they met. There he received encouragement from
established writers including the late Alden Nowlan, whom he names
as an important influence along with Faulkner, Pushkin, Dostoevsky
and Emily Bronte. He published a book of poetry, Small
Heroics, in the New Brunswick Chapbooks Series in 1972. When
the first five chapters of The Coming of Winter
won the Norma Epstein Prize for Creative Writing in 1973, he left
university three credits short of his degree to write full-time;
the book was published the following year, and translated into
Russian.
He and his wife Peggy, who had met at 17 and married at 21, spent
several years travelling in Canada, Australia and Europe (they
particularly loved Spain), where he found he could write about the
Miramichi he loved regardless of where he lived. Gradually, he took
postings as writer-in-residence at universities in New Brunswick,
Ottawa, Alberta, and Virginia. In 1997, they moved to Toronto,
where they now live with their two young sons, John Thomas and
Anton, and their dog Roo. Living in Toronto where Peggy has family
allows the rest of the family to live a normal life when Richards
is absorbed in his work and writing late at night.
Though Richards has won or been nominated for almost every award
for which he''s been eligible, one of only three writers to win
both fiction and non-fiction categories of the Governor General's
Award, his writing was often criticized for being too bleak or too
regional, and it was years before he made money. He laughs at the
sales of his early work: "For a long while if I sold 200 books, I'd
be saying: Oh, great! And, you know, a $50 advance! That''s great.
I only worked three years, I don''t know if I can spend $50."
His screenwriting career was launched in 1987 with the premiere of
Tuesday, Wednesday. The screen play for Small
Gifts, a Christmas special first aired on the CBC in 1994,
received international acclaim at the New York Film Festival and
won him his first Gemini; he won his second for the screen
adaptation of For Those Who Hunt the Wounded Down.
He continues to adapt his own work for the screen.
As he documented in a passionate and humorous meditation,
Lines on the Water, he loves fly-fishing on the
Miramichi river. No longer a resident, he was recently made an
honorary Miramichier by the people of New Brunswick so he could get
a fishing licence. He has also written a non-fiction book on the
place of hockey in the Canadian soul, and is working on a hunting
book, though hasn't hunted big game for several years.
His fiction shows his deep interest in rural men and women, who are
"extremely condescended to and misunderstood so much of the time".
Characters like Cynthia and Mat Pit and Leo McVicer he sees as
brilliant and strong, and not particularly unusual in a rural
environment. He remembers people who were "reading the classics
when they were 11-years-old and lived in a dirt shack", like Sydney
Henderson.
Hand in hand with this goes a fascination with power, whether
economic or intellectual, and its capacity for corruption. He
recalls his university years during the Vietnam War, when "power
was the main focus of the people", and seeing friends use the peace
movement for their own gain. "I saw how lives were bullied and
humiliated by this… And Peggy and I became outcasts because I
refused to participate... I thought that if power is so easily
attained and misused by people who say they''re for peace then
there must be something fundamentally wrong with it… I''m not
saying these people are good or bad, I''m just saying it''s a human
failing."
He admires writers who "leave a lot unsaid", and tries to put that
quality into his own work now, having pared down his technique. His
short stories and articles have been published in literary
magazines and anthologies, and he has two unpublished plays,
The Dungarvan Whooper and Water Carriers, Bones and
Earls: the Life of François Villon, and one unpublished novel,
Donna. His literary papers were acquired
in 1994 by the University of New Brunswick.
Bookclub Guide
Can you tell us how you became a writer?
Read Oliver Twist when I was 14 - never wanted to do
anything else after that.
What inspired you to write this particular book? Is there a
story about the writing of this novel that begs to be
told?
It's a book with one question. When is turning against others
necessary. It is a question asked by two people, Sydney and Lyle.
And in their struggle all society is examined from top to
bottom.
What is that you're exploring in this book?
Many themes and many favourite characters. One of the major themes
is how modern men and women have mistaken public opinion for truth,
and have at times allowed this to diminish their better
natures.
Are there any tips you would give a book club to better
navigate their discussion of your book?
Realize that this is a study as much of love as hate, as much of
joy as sorrow. Elly and Sydney are not the victims here - those who
torment them and order their trial are.
Which authors have been most influential to your own
writing?
Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Conrad, Bronte, Alden Nowlan, Alistair
MacLeod, and many others.
If you weren't writing, what would you want to be doing for
a living? What are some of your other passions in
life?
I'd be dead from over-fishing and over-hunting and
over-curling.
If you could have written one book in history, what book
would that be?
I can't imagine writing War and Peace.