She Treads Softly: The Speed of Mercy

Monday, August 2, 2021

The Speed of Mercy

The Speed of Mercy by Christy Ann Conlin
3/23/21; 384 pages
House of Anansi Press

The Speed of Mercy by Christy Ann Conlin is a so-so atmospheric Gothic mystery.

Malmuria (Mal) Grant-Patel is a podcaster who travels to Mercy Lake, located in rural Nova Scotia. This is the area where her mother grew up and left for good years ago, but there is a mystery surrounding the lodge that burn down in the 1980's. Mel thinks if she investigates the lodge and reports her findings it will give her podcast a boost and her life a purpose, but once she begins to get anonymous threats she knows she is not prepared to really investigate anything and might be in danger.

Stella Sprague, 54, lives at the Jericho County Care Centre where she has been for most of her adult life after a traumatic brain injury and another traumatic event. She is a friend with Dianne, an 84 year-old resident at the home, who helps her negotiate her schedule and life in the home. Stella struggles with uncertain memories and secrets hide just under the surface of her memories. Stella tells her life story which is divided up into before, during and after the horrible accident and the horrific affliction, or as she calls the incidents, HA HA.

The writing shows a lot of promise and can be both poetic, thoughtful, and descriptive. The narrative moves back and forth in time and between characters covering Mel's present day investigation and Stella's memories, both in the 1980's, and in the present. Sometimes the technique of telling a story through alternating characters in alternating timelines works and sometimes it doesn't. In this case it doesn't and for much of the beginning of the very slow paced novel the plot didn't grab my attention and I forced myself to keep reading. No matter how lyrical the writing is, a novel still needs a strong plot and good pacing to hold a reader's interest. It also took quite awhile for the characters to become fully realized. In the end this is a novel that excels in using language and descriptions but falls short on plot and character development.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of the House of Anansi Press.

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John Updike's six rules for reviewing:

1. Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.

2. Give him enough direct quotation--at least one extended passage--of the book's prose so the review's reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.

3. Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy precis.

4. Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending.

5. If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author's oeuvre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it's his and not yours?

To these concrete five might be added a vaguer sixth, having to do with maintaining a chemical purity in the reaction between product and appraiser.....Review the book, not the reputation.... Better to praise and share than blame and ban. The communion between reviewer and his public is based upon the presumption of certain possible joys in reading, and all our discriminations should curve toward that end.