Mercy Among the Children

Chris Knight is copy editor of the National Post in Toronto.

David Adams Richards’s latest novel has the scope of Shakespeare; vast
tragedies and passions on a small stage. The story takes place in
small-town New Brunswick and concerns the life of Lyle Henderson, whose
father, Sydney, is dirt-poor, the most well-read man in his community,
and the scapegoat for all its ills. Sydney lives by a philosophy of
nonviolence that extends even to verbal self-defence, so that when a
mysterious accident leaves a child dead, he will not counter the opinion
that he was to blame.

“My father’s one unshakable belief was that people could do him no
harm if he did no harm himself,” says Lyle, who narrates the story.
“I think over his life, by turns elated and dejected, and realize that
so many of his finest moments were lost to the great swarm of mankind.
... Yet in so many ways no moment was wasted, and no man was essentially
greater.”

Sydney’s troubles are but one cog in a wheel of crimes and
recrimination that threatens to roll over the community. In fact, his
innocent nature among the dark looks and darker deeds gives the tale
some buoyancy, balanced by the narrator’s growing anger at the
injustices the world metes out to him and his family. The story concerns
itself with timeless issues of personal and moral responsibility and of
people’s ability to believe their own lies. Yet not for a moment does
it deign to preach, leaving readers to draw their own uneasy
conclusions.