Mercy Road

By Dalia Pagani

Book Overview

From an astonishing new voice on the American literary landscape comes a powerful, haunting novel set against the harsh beauty of rural Vermont.??In Mercy Road Dalia Pagani exposes the soul of a... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0385320167
• ISBN13: 9780385320160
• Release Date: January 1998
• Publisher: Delacorte Press
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 1.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.8" x 1.5" x 6.0"

Customer Reviews

A fine new writer, looking forward to more!

For a novel based on harsh realism, I found the character of Tina to be sureal. Mid-way, she filled many pages and I became bored with her situation. By the end, I decided that if she had been omitted entirely, she wouldn't have been missed. On the other hand, Aunt Mattie and Uncle Tom had the potential to be very strong characters, not only in the lives of Darlene and the children but most especially for Earl, for whom I felt some sympathy. He struck me as being mean and cold simply for the sake of not knowing any better. Mattie came on the scene too late, and in my opinion, dumped a lot of revelations and insight into the story that (at that point) was already complex. She was distracting when I wanted to focus on the other characters - I found myself wondering "where have you been? why now?". Overall, I really liked this novel and look forward to future work by this author. Highly recommended.

Premature review - only 1/2 finished.

So far I've found this very enjoyable. The characters are interesting and unpredictable. I don't see the story as being so much about weather and poverty as it is the unstated emotional needs of this family. Any woman that's ever felt unappreciated can relate, in some aspects, to Darlene. For the record, I found The Book of Ruth (Jane Hamilton) terribly depressing. Enough so, that I have not since sought any other of her novels. I do suggest Amy and Isabelle (Elizabeth Strout).

A gorgeous book.

I loved it. Found it at library by chance. Beautiful writing. Totally real characters and landscape. One or two events seemed somewhat over the edge, at first - but when i think about it -life is often that way. Sid was a totally heartbreaking character. An awesome writer!

magnificent story and writing

In the genre of E. Annie Proulx and Carolyn Chute, a new standard has been set by this Vermont saga of a unique family, steeped in poverty and surviving the best way each family member is able. It is poetic, creative and sensitive writing with unique characters and a compelling plot. How I hated it to EVER end! A new bench mark !

Passionate, Exciting, Beautiful!

Dalia Pagani is being compared to E. Annie Proulx, Howard Frank Mosher and Charles Frazier but, in fact, hers is as an incomparable new fictional voice. The cover blurbs on Mercy Road say "astonishing", "powerful", "gorgeous" "hauntingly lyrical", "mystical" and "marvelously moving", and all of that is true. Her writing rushes with vivid images of landscape and character, of a lonely ridge in the Green Mountains, of the Summer family, tragically trapped, as generations have been, to each other and to the land. The reader enters their unfolding lives and is swept off in a fictional dream which takes magical, heart-warming and heart-wrenching turns. Mercy Road resonates. Earl Summer, hunter and trapper, little different from generations of Summers preceding him, fights poverty, failure, the incomprehensible changes around him with literal and figurative traps and guns, fights he cannot possibly win. Mercy Road is passionate, exciting, involving, disturbing and beautifully, elegantly written.