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A Novel
by Jennifer Haigh
Book Reviewed by:The highly praised, "extraordinary" (New York Times Book Review) novel about the disparate lives that intersect at a women's clinic in Boston, by New York Times bestselling author Jennifer Haigh
For almost a decade, Claudia has counseled patients at Mercy Street, a clinic in the heart of the city. The work is consuming, the unending dramas of women in crisis. For its patients, Mercy Street offers more than health care; for many, it is a second chance.
But outside the clinic, the reality is different. Anonymous threats are frequent. A small, determined group of anti-abortion demonstrators appears each morning at its door. As the protests intensify, fear creeps into Claudia's days, a humming anxiety she manages with frequent visits to Timmy, an affable pot dealer in the midst of his own existential crisis. At Timmy's, she encounters a random assortment of customers, including Anthony, a lost soul who spends most of his life online, chatting with the mysterious Excelsior11—the screenname of Victor Prine, an anti-abortion crusader who has set his sights on Mercy Street and is ready to risk it all for his beliefs.
Mercy Street is a novel for right now, a story of the polarized American present. Jennifer Haigh, "an expert natural storyteller with a keen sense of her characters' humanity" (New York Times), has written a groundbreaking novel, a fearless examination of one of the most divisive issues of our time.
Winter
1
It's hard to know, ever, where a story begins. We touch down in a world fully inhabited by others, a drama already in progress. By the time we make our entrance—incontinent and screaming, like dirty bombs detonating—the climax is a distant memory. Our arrival is not the beginning; it is a consequence.
The starting point is arbitrary. When Claudia looks back on that winter (as New Englanders can't help doing), the days fuse together in her memory: the weak light fading early, salt trucks clattering down the avenues, a bitter wind slicing through her coat. She had no sense, at the time, of forces aligning, a chain of events set into motion.
Like everyone else, she was distracted by the snow.
The season had arrived late, like a querulous old man who refused to be rushed. The first weeks of January were arid and silent, bare pavement and short blue afternoons, a blinding glare off the harbor, seagulls diving in the slanted winter sun. Then a massive nor'easter ...
The novel has many excellent qualities, first and foremost of which is Haigh's ability to create truly three-dimensional characters. What makes them outstanding is not only their depth, but their ability to change and grow over the course of the novel. Unfortunately, I feel there are also a couple of major problems with the book. The author missed an opportunity to have a rational debate about abortion rights — depicting anti-abortionists as exclusively male and completely irrational paints with entirely too broad a brush...continued
Full Review
(636 words)
(Reviewed by Kim Kovacs).
Rebecca Makkai, Pulitzer Prize finalist for The Great Believers
Mercy Street is propulsive, urgent, and essential. Haigh writes with uncommon insight and compassion (and, yes, mercy) about people whose ideals are so strikingly at odds that we can only wait for their lives to collide. I was riveted and transported, and want to hand this book to everyone I know. Richard Ford
Mercy Street is a savvy, keen-eyed, witty, wise, and altogether luminous novel. A triumph. Jennifer Haigh is a young master of this form. Though, at day's end, I'd read her just to read her. Vendela Vida, author of We Run the Tides
Mercy Street is a bold, important, beautifully written and incredibly timely novel.
Jennifer Haigh's novel, Mercy Street, centers around a clinic that provides women's health care services, including abortion.
As most know, it is already difficult to gain access to legal abortion services in many parts of the United States; but legislation to outlaw access is now gaining traction, both by the Supreme Court and in many conservative states. However, some might not be aware that abortion was unregulated in the U.S. until the mid-1800s. According to Planned Parenthood, before this time, "Common law allowed for abortion prior to 'quickening' – an archaic term for fetal movement that usually happens after around four months of pregnancy." Medical literature of the day regularly discussed abortion methods, focusing on ...
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