Library Journal - Audio
03/01/2022
Claudia grew up poor in rural Maine, eventually moving to Boston and working in a women's health clinic. The clinic provides multiple health services for women, including abortion. Other characters in the story, some completely unknown to Claudia, play roles in the ongoing drama surrounding the clinic. Timmy, a drug dealer, supplies Claudia's marijuana. Anthony, a devout Catholic living on disability, snaps photos of women entering the clinic. Survivalist Victor collects Anthony's photos for his Wall of Shame. When Claudia miraculously "falls pregnant" at age 44, her priorities shift. Circumstances and random events redirect the other characters as well. Haigh (Baker Towers) effectively links the lives of unrelated people, conveying the persona of each character and outlining possible reasons for their widely varying outlooks. Narrator Stacey Glemboski brings the characters to life. VERDICT Recommended for public libraries.—Joanna Burkhardt
MARCH 2022 - AudioFile
Narrator Stacy Glemboski has a gift for shifting her tone as she portrays the two main characters in this novel. Her depiction of 43-year-old Claudia, an abortion counselor at a Boston clinic, is warm and compassionate. Glemboski effectively reflects Claudia’s stress at the escalating threats of protestors. Glemboski’s tone is colder when she voices the viewpoint of Victor, a racist sociopath who is fixated on his online “Hall of Shame,” where he posts pictures of “whores” who want to murder their babies. When both hero and antihero face reversals, Glemboski delivers the ending with the irony it deserves. S.W. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine
Publishers Weekly
12/20/2021
Haigh (Heat & Light) explores the issue of abortion in this layered if frustrating story of a Boston women’s health clinic. Claudia, a counselor at Mercy Street, struggles with insomnia and anxiety after the death of her difficult mother, as well as because of her daily work with women who are faced with unwanted pregnancies. To cope, she smokes weed. Meanwhile, antiabortion protesters mount a steady campaign outside the clinic, and Haigh delves into their world. Among them is a rabidly antiabortion activist and racist retiree named Victor, who is tangentially connected to Claudia’s dealer and maintains a website where he shames white women who visit Mercy Street. The set up is strong and culminates in Victor deciding to travel to Boston from his log cabin in Pennsylvania to “save” Claudia, but the narrative runs out of steam just as it gets going. Haigh doesn’t successfully weave the different narrative threads, delving into what leads men to become violent antichoice activists, for instance, but leaving the female characters disappointingly unexplored. There are some solid building blocks, but they crumble into an unsatisfying resolution. This doesn’t hit the high marks it aims for. Agent: Dorian Karchmar, WME. (Feb.)
From the Publisher
"Extraordinary . . . Wonderfully entertaining, boasting a large, varied cast of vividly drawn characters whose company readers will find deeply rewarding, in no small part because lurking in their shadows is the devastatingly wry humor of their creator. . . . [Haigh is] paying close attention to their choices, large and small. That’s not artifice, it’s art. And I was gobsmacked." — Richard Russo, New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice)
“[Haigh is] a superb unsung novelist hovering just under the radar. . . Abortion, guns, vigilantism, drug dealing, white supremacy, bitter misogyny and online fetishism all figure in the tableau Haigh expertly details. . . . Her books might feel traditional if she relied on simple structure, but she likes Altmanesque ways of weaving characters together. . . . She’s largely not interested in destruction here: These people have seen enough of it already. She’s interested in what makes them human.” — Janet Maslin, New York Times
“Haigh deftly walks across the fault line of one of the most divisive issues of our age, peeling back ideology and revealing what all ideology refuses to recognize: an individual’s humanity. . . . Mercy Street argues, both in form and content, that compassion is a powerful counterpoint to the conflict-driven stories that dominate our news cycles, our news feeds and our Netflix queues. In Haigh’s world, in other words, mercy may no longer be fashionable, but it sure is necessary.” — San Francisco Chronicle
"Terrifically readable.” — Wall Street Journal
“Perceptive. . . . In Haigh’s expert hands, [Mercy Street] explores how we arrive at the beliefs we hold.” — Real Simple
“Fiction is often a more alluring vessel of truth than nonfiction, and in her recently lauded novel centered on a Boston abortion clinic in 2015, Haigh depicts lives that intersect publicly as her characters grapple with the most intimate of decisions. From a clinic hotline manager to a gaggle of anti-abortion protestors, Haigh boldly seeks out moral nuance, melding crystalline language to a topical story that twists and turns toward a stunning crescendo." — Oprah Daily
Vendela Vida
"Mercy Street is a bold, important, beautifully written and incredibly timely novel."
San Francisco Chronicle
Haigh deftly walks across the fault line of one of the most divisive issues of our age, peeling back ideology and revealing what all ideology refuses to recognize: an individual’s humanity. . . . Mercy Street argues, both in form and content, that compassion is a powerful counterpoint to the conflict-driven stories that dominate our news cycles, our news feeds and our Netflix queues. In Haigh’s world, in other words, mercy may no longer be fashionable, but it sure is necessary.
Richard Russo
"Extraordinary . . . Wonderfully entertaining, boasting a large, varied cast of vividly drawn characters whose company readers will find deeply rewarding, in no small part because lurking in their shadows is the devastatingly wry humor of their creator. . . . [Haigh is] paying close attention to their choices, large and small. That’s not artifice, it’s art. And I was gobsmacked."
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.”
Wall Street Journal
"Terrifically readable.”
Real Simple
“Perceptive. . . . In Haigh’s expert hands, [Mercy Street] explores how we arrive at the beliefs we hold.
Ron Charles
Haigh has been a brilliant witness to the struggles of ordinary people.
Janet Maslin
[Haigh is] a superb unsung novelist hovering just under the radar. . . Abortion, guns, vigilantism, drug dealing, white supremacy, bitter misogyny and online fetishism all figure in the tableau Haigh expertly details. . . . Her books might feel traditional if she relied on simple structure, but she likes Altmanesque ways of weaving characters together. . . . She’s largely not interested in destruction here: These people have seen enough of it already. She’s interested in what makes them human.
Rebecca Makkai
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."
San Francisco Chronicle
Haigh deftly walks across the fault line of one of the most divisive issues of our age, peeling back ideology and revealing what all ideology refuses to recognize: an individual’s humanity. . . . Mercy Street argues, both in form and content, that compassion is a powerful counterpoint to the conflict-driven stories that dominate our news cycles, our news feeds and our Netflix queues. In Haigh’s world, in other words, mercy may no longer be fashionable, but it sure is necessary.
Joanna Rakoff
I'm just going to say it: Jennifer Haigh is the greatest novelist of our generation. And Mercy Street is her best novel yet.
Dorthe Nors
"Mercy Street is a strong and heartfelt story about contemporary America in all its complexities, an important and necessary book."
Rebecca Makki
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."
Library Journal
02/01/2022
Despite Boston's brutal winter of 2015, the work of the Mercy Street women's health center never falters. The clients are desperate to end their unwanted pregnancies against a ticking legal calendar. Forty-three-year-old Claudia (herself born to an unwed teenage mother) has been a counselor for a decade. Her deep well of compassion and patience is at the heart of the novel and its intertwining lives—the center's clients, with their wildly diverse circumstances; the anti-abortion protestors outside the clinic every day who become more and more threatening; Timmy, Claudia's friend with the good weed; and Anthony, the deeply religious Catholic protestor under the thrall of the mysterious online Excelsior11, who is targeting Claudia. As the snow piles up, the danger to the clinic grows, but the work must go on. VERDICT Haigh (Baker Towers), an award-winning, New York Times best-selling author, holds her readers captive from first to last page with an unflinching look at the human tragedies that lie behind every layer of the never-ending controversial national abortion battle. Her piercing character portrayals and eavesdrop-quality dialogue will have readers asking for her previous works.—Beth Andersen
MARCH 2022 - AudioFile
Narrator Stacy Glemboski has a gift for shifting her tone as she portrays the two main characters in this novel. Her depiction of 43-year-old Claudia, an abortion counselor at a Boston clinic, is warm and compassionate. Glemboski effectively reflects Claudia’s stress at the escalating threats of protestors. Glemboski’s tone is colder when she voices the viewpoint of Victor, a racist sociopath who is fixated on his online “Hall of Shame,” where he posts pictures of “whores” who want to murder their babies. When both hero and antihero face reversals, Glemboski delivers the ending with the irony it deserves. S.W. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
2021-11-30
Having addressed fracking in Heat and Light (2016), Haigh now tackles abortion in a polemical novel that revolves around a Boston women’s clinic.
Divorced and childless, 43-year-old Claudia is an abortion counselor at Mercy Street, a clinic in a gentrified area of Boston once known as the Combat Zone. As the daughter of an impoverished single teenage mother, she well understands “the stark daily realities that made motherhood impossible” for many of her clients. After nine years, Claudia is a pro at taking care of the patients while ignoring the protestors who gather outside the clinic every morning. Still, the stresses of the job get to her (the women with late-term pregnancies “cracked her open”), so periodically Claudia seeks relief from her pot dealer, Timmy. Also dropping in to make a buy is Anthony, a lonely incel living off disability insurance in his mother’s basement. Anthony spends his days attending Mass, protesting at Mercy Street, and emailing photos of women going into the clinic to an anti-abortion crusader with the screen name of Excelsior11, who's actually a Vietnam vet and former long-haul trucker named Victor Prine. During the winter of 2015, these four characters, whose social isolation keeps them as frozen as Boston’s stormy weather, will find their lives intersecting and transformed, not always for the better. Haigh excels at depicting people beaten down by life, but it’s hard to feel much sympathy for her drearily drawn male protagonists, who are less nuanced individuals than indistinguishable stereotypes. With the anti-abortion movement gathering steam in the legislative arena, her portrait feels dated.
Despite its flaws, Haigh’s novel will provide plenty of discussion fodder for reading groups.
