Small Mercies by Dennis Lehane (2023)

[jserraglio]

I would like to own the film rights to this blockbuster of a novel, set in South Boston during the busing riots of 1974.

“Small Mercies” is set in 1974 Boston on the eve of mandatory school busing, but — like so many period pieces — it’s as much about the present as it is about the past. It zeros in on bigotry that ought to feel dated but doesn’t: White, Irish American South Boston is up in literal arms about integration. A young Black man can die just for wandering into the wrong place.

Lehane’s language about these events is so unsparing it has shock value. It’s not quotable here. The white characters’ mildest thought is that the dead kid must have been a drug dealer, and it gets uglier from there, as Lehane draws on every vicious, bigoted slur he must have heard growing up in Dorchester.

Lehane rarely narrates from a female point of view. But his main character this time, a bruiser named Mary Pat Fennessy, is something else. “This is a woman we’re talking about?” one incredulous guy asks. “Project chick from Southie” is the answer. “They breed them a little different there.”