Book Notes: Mercy Among the Children by David Adams Richards

I am gathering a collection of twenty-first-century books that reflect conservative sensibilities, and the novel Mercy Among the Children by the great Canadian writer David Adams Richards is my most recent addition. This is a very, very talented book, my friends. It grabs you by the throat and never lets go. I’ll probably not be able to read anything else for days after finishing it because it still holds me.

Mercy Among the Children is set in rural New Brunswick in 1980s, and it not only speaks to the things that really matter but offers the best insight of any other work of fiction I have read into the genesis of wokism.

Sydney, an indigent working-class man with a sky-high IQ, dedicates his life to enacting a perverted form of Christianity which consists of him debasing himself in the most extreme ways. There is no humiliation or beating Sydney doesn’t eagerly seek. When he gets unfairly accused of pedophilia, he does everything to make the accusation ring true because it would hurt the feelings of the accusers if he openly declared them wrong.

“It is what I know, yet I have no right to force others to feel it,” Sydney explains in a perfect encapsulation of the idea that everybody has their own truth and these “privatized truths” all have identical value.

Sydney’s love of self-abasement wouldn’t be that bad if he were single. But he’s a married father of three, and his wife and children bear the worst of the abuse that Sydney invites. His wife is raped, his son beaten and humiliated, his daughter defiled but Sydney is beautifically happy in the knowledge that he hurt nobody’s feelings by accusing them of these crimes.

There is, of course, much more to the novel than the insight into wokeness. It shows how feminism can turn malignant and anti-family, how the Canadian tax system is an abomination that ruins people (you know what I mean if it ever had its clutches into you), how Canadian academics use aboriginals as a career-making topic, how environmentalism can be a ruse for money interests and help a corrupt government, and how hard it is to scratch your way to a truly Christian understanding of life.

And the writing, people. Such beautiful writing. It’s a book that I didn’t want to end because the pleasure of reading was intense. The novel is about Catholics. For some reason, the best Canadian literature I’ve read is either about Catholics or about Jews.

It’s a profound novel but it’s very dark. If you aren’t in the best place for heavy stuff, don’t read it now. It’s also the most Christian North American novel I’ve ever read. David Adams Richards is like a conservative, very Christian Richard Russo. For people who say there’s no conservative art any more, go read this dude. If this isn’t art, I don’t know what is.