The Mercy Rule

by Perri Klass

At first glance, Dr. Lucy Weiss looks like the typical high-achieving, upper-middle-class working mother who, along with her husband, is bringing up much-beloved children in a world of Saturday morning soccer, private-school teacher conferences, and hyperaggressive classroom mommies. But Lucy’s own history makes her an anomaly. Having overcome a difficult childhood in foster care, she is what’s called a super-survivor, a kid who grew up in the margins. Now a pediatrician, Lucy finds herself working with some of these same at-risk patients and their families.

The Mercy Rule is a novel about the all-important job of taking care of children. Lucy’s work takes her back into the world of families living on the edge, where every day she must decide whether parents’ actions are so incompetent—or so flaky—that their children are in danger. It’s her job to make the call and to step in when she has to. As she moves between her disparate worlds—from worrying about her own brilliant but odd son being labeled with a diagnosis to worrying about parents struggling with drugs and impossible living situations—Lucy must judge herself as a parent, critique other parents, and also deal with the echoes of her childhood.

Watching Lucy try to keep the balance, enjoy her own children, and look at other families with humor and justice and mercy, readers will understand why Chris Bohjalian said of Perri Klass, “Few writers write as beautifully or as authentically about parenting.”

Genres: Fiction, Medicine, Contemporary, Novels

276 pages, Hardcover

First published July 7, 2008

About the author

Perri Klass is a pediatrician who writes fiction and non-fiction. She writes about children and families, about medicine, about food and travel, and about knitting. Her newest book is a novel, The Mercy Rule, and the book before that was a work of non-fiction, Treatment Kind and Fair: Letters to a Young Doctor, written in the form of letters to her older son as he starts medical school.
She lives in New York City, where she is Professor of Journalism and Pediatrics at New York University, and she has three children of her own. She is also Medical Director of Reach Out and Read, a national literacy organization which works through doctors and nurses to promote parents reading aloud to young children.
source: www.perriklass.com

Reviews

[Maureen Grigsby · Rating 4 out of 5]

I always enjoy a book by Dr. Perri Klass!

[Kara Jacobs]

Another book that I expected to like and couldn't/wouldn't/didn't finish. I read maybe the first 1/5th of it, but I disliked the main character--obviously modeled on the author herself--so much that I just couldn't go on it was too painful. The main character was just too self-satisfied and faux-tough and faux-witty and faux-heart -of -gold -under- the -tough -exterior for me. (and the corollary, everybody else is stupid and grist for her faux -wit) I was really sad, because I've absolutely loved everything else that she's written that I've ever read. I even wrote to her once telling her how much I loved her work. Maybe that's what did it--too much praise.

[Megan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although this is a novel, it reads more like a bunch of short stories about one family. Lucy is a pediatrician who works with foster care kids, and has a husband and 2 children. I kept waiting for a climatic moment, which never seemed to come. I prefer her non-fiction.

[Merredith · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a random book that I took out from the library. At first I thought i might not like it, and was pleasantly surprised at how interested i was, but then as soon as I moved away from the first couple of chapters, it went downhill. The book is about a pediatrician who mainly works with kids from social services, something she feels strongly about because she was a foster child/adopted herself. she has a husband and two kids, but kind of ignores the husband half the time, and she blatantly dislikes her daughter, favoring her son. Her daughter knows this. Poor thing. She also looked down on her patients. The main woman was just so distasteful to me that it ruined the whole book. Stories of different families were interesting, as were the chapters narrated by the daughter.

[Danielle Schryver · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hmmmm well Im not sure what to think about this book. I finished it last night and Im still not sure what the plot was, if there even was one. It seemed quite disjointed and jumpy and didn't flow all that well.

All that said, I guess I did enjoy it. I kept wanting to go back and read it anyway. And there was this character Freddy, a 7 yr old boy that reminded me a lot of my son Ben :)

So what was the book about? It was about a pediatrician that worked with the foster care system to make sure the children's health was taken care of. It was about her and her family. As I said....Im not really all that sure what it was about.

I love the cover picture :)

[Beverly · Rating 1 out of 5]

Story of a family. The protagonist, Lucy Weiss,is a pediatrician who treats foster children and children at risk of placement. She herself was a foster child after her mother died when Lucy was a young child. The material in this novel is undigested. It reads more like linked short stories. The author and/or her editor did not do their jobs properly. Also contains some undigested hostility toward middle class families and their appendages - teachers, coaches, etc.

[Juliette Lantz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great read - this is story about a doctor who works for the department of Social Services, evaluating children at risk in their homes or in the foster care system - a system she survived. As a mom, she is also struggling to relate to the needs/personalities of her own two children. Her upbringing, career and current family life are all woven intricately together, and I felt like I knew her personally almost immediately.

Will recommend for a bookclub reading!!

[melanie (lit*chick) · Rating 4 out of 5]

this was written in a unique, rambling style - much like the thoughts of a busy mom. lucy is a former foster child, now a doctor in a clinic assessing at risk children, trying to take care of her family while worrying others. i thought it was pretty funny and right-on about parenting, a little preachy in parts, but worthwhile.
more like a 4 minus. but closer to a 4 than a 3. :)

[Malin Friess · Rating 1 out of 5]

One star...I only made it 25 pages before abandoning this train wreck. I agree with Megan and Jennifer...this book has no plot. This pediatrician wrote an excellent, readable, moving book in "Treatment, Kind and Fair."....it seems like with this fiction book...its like a pediatrician working in the geriatric ward...one big mess!

[Megan · Rating 1 out of 5]

Um, what I learned was that this book had no point. I kept thinking that something, anything was going to happen and then blah it was over without any resolution. This woman was self-centered and it practically made her squirm watching her children. Uh, no vote to read this again!

[Donna · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is not really a novel with a connected story and narrative arc so much as a collection of short stories about one particular family. It's a family I found a hard time relating to, as they were upper class professionals living in a wealthy community near Boston with two children in an expensive private school. The main character is a pediatrician who works with foster care children because she was once one herself. She brings a passion to it, but a sort of disconnected passion, as she does to her family. I had a hard time relating to her and didn't really want to be in her hectic mind for most of the story.

I like that she also dealt with the issue of an autistic child and the negative effects labeling could have and how domestic abuse and neglect can happen in both the most wealthy and the poorest, but not much of the book focused on the poor. There were two stories within the book that I thought were masterful: "Unaccompanied Minors" and "About Me." The second is from the POV of a 5th grader and I felt like the author totally captured the worries, fears, misinterpretations and mixture of immaturity and maturity seen at that age. The book is worth getting just to read those stories.

[Maddie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is light and fluffy and easy to read. But there’s no story. Nothing happens, no one grows. Just lots of unconnected tid bits with the same character. There’s potential: a section about grappling with the possibility that their son is on the autism spectrum, a section about a woman claiming her husband abuses her after he claims she abuses their kids and no one knows who to believe, the many foster mom stories. But no. We never see any of this play out. Just a glimpse and then it’s time to start a new chapter.

[Eileen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really was gripped by this. Its written by a paediatrician and the medical details had that ring of true experience. I enjoyed Lucy as a character, especially her compassion for the families at risk she tries to help. This is written like a collection of stories, but it moves ahead with some main plot points like a novel would. I got less interested when her daughter was narrating a few of the stories.

[1RadReader · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was looking forward to reading this book because I thought it would be super interesting, but it was really hard to read. There didn’t seem to be any real story development. Each VERY long chapter rambled on and on and it felt like I was reading a printout of the main character’s inner thoughts. Really disappointed because it is a great premise for a book.

[Becky Buchenic · Rating 2 out of 5]

Meh.
Not sure what the storyline was? Didn’t care for the main character and was hopeful there would be more connection from her days in foster care to supporting children in foster care
Just a blah book - wanted to quit after the first chapter but can’t break that streak

[Bridgette · Rating 3 out of 5]

Seemed to lack the strength of plot needed to really drive a story forward.

[Kristi · Rating 2 out of 5]

Apparently I missed the plot of the story. It just felt like a series of incidents tied together.

[Melissa Francis · Rating 3 out of 5]

A lot of chaotic instances and stories that jump around

[Rashmi Tiwari · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm so torn about this book: I love Perri Klass' non-fiction and I really wanted to like it but ultimately, I could not get past the idea that this was a thinly-veiled memoir (which I'm cool with) but with a narrator who seemed to have no sense of self-awareness.

Like Klass, Dr. Lucy Weiss is a pediatrician, a mother and the wife of a history professor. (He may be an English professor in this book.) Like Klass, one of Dr. Weiss' children is "quirky."

The problem isn't that Klass clearly used her own experience to inform this novel, it's that the story doesn't really ever take flight and there is no narrative arc to speak of. It reads as a collection of memories from the fictional Dr. Weiss' childhood as a foster child interspersed with non-linear vignettes of her adult life with her family and her work as a pediatrician. The whole book feels disjointed and as if each chapter may hold weight as a short-story; taken together, the whole does not make a novel.

Finally (this is long for me), while this is the weakest criticism out there, I really could not get behind Dr. Weiss as a character. She does very important and heartbreaking work and Klass writes beautifully about the Dickensian conflict involved with creating a safety net for children in need (it'll never be enough but there needs to be a system in place). Dr. Weiss, though, comes across as judgmental and perpetually irritated and unable to connect to her daughter and too protective of her "quirky" son and with her husband, is smugly condescending of every person in their wealthy suburb (which they chose) and the other parents at their kids' fancy expensive private school (again, which they chose).

Ultimately, I could not reconcile Klass' immersing the reader into the sordid lives of Dr. Weiss' poor patients and their incompetent mothers and told again and again how Dr. Weiss is unable to leave her work even for a second only to see how smug and judgmental and friendless and generally unlikeable she is as a mother and wife and friend. Perhaps that's the point?

[Cassandra · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is one of those books that grew on me the more I read it. Klass has a unique way of weaving a story that didn't draw me in at first. I'll admist that I considered returning the book to the library because I felt I just wasn't able to "get into it." I'm glad I kept reading though - the more I read, the more drawn in I became.

A strange look into the minds of a pediatrician and her children living an upper middle class, white bread existence that is fraught with troubles of its own.

At some points the passage of time wasn't exactly clear to me - I had a hard time piecing together how much time had passed at certain points.

This is outside my comfort zone of something I would normally read, but it was by no means a terrible book just because it wasn't my usual style. One thing Klass did particularly well was to take characters that only have a few mentions and turn them into real people, with flaws and strengths and quirks that make you feel sympathetic with them.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

I expected to like this a lot more than I actually did, because a few pages in a child's birthday party is referred to as a "goddamned birthday party" and I could completely understand the frustration of having an entire Saturday taken away by an event. Unfortunately, I didn't realize that each chapter was actually a story about the family the book is based on. This wouldn't be too much a of a problem if they ended satisfyingly, but too often they didn't. I was left with questions that just weren't answered. Lucy and her husband Greg eventually started to get on my nerves, because they had a cutting or witty thought about everyone that they knew, which made it seem as if they thought themselves really perfect. I also thought it was weird that she apparently just forgave him for cheating on her because of some stupid "power-shifting" reasoning.

[Diana · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed the many anecdotes in this book, but because the narrative proceeded solely through that series of anecdotes it sometimes felt a bit disjointed.

I wanted to know more about Dr. Lucy Weiss as a person, and felt like I got glimpses, mainly of her early life, but never enough for me to fully understand her as a character. I also would have liked a little more about some of the women or children, like Athena Harris, whom she worked with in the clinic, since the contrast between Lucy's relatively privileged life and the lives of those she served through her practice was highlighted over and over. Delia was the only one who merited an extended narrative. A few more of those would have added additional dimension to the story.

I was excited about the premise of this book but feel that some avenues were left unexplored. I liked Lucy and her family but wanted more!

[Danielle · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm about halfway into this book. I'm getting through it, but I'm not loving it. I really want to like it, but it's a bit aimless and choppy. The main character is a successful doctor who survived the foster care system, so she has some serious baggage - this should be a lot more compelling than it is - what's her point??? If you're going to give your book a provocative title like "The Mercy Rule," you should have something provocative to say, or at least something definitive to say! Have a point of view, or don't stand center stage. But I'm holding out the hope that she's going somewhere, so I'm sticking with it for now.

[Nichola · Rating 3 out of 5]

A woman who is a foster care success story takes us through a year or so of her experiences as a parent and as a doctor seeing young DSS patients. I liked the thoughtful nature of the book, and the depiction of the ever developing character of her relationship with her children. I couldn't quite understand why her children were in a private school if she disliked it so much. Also I found the relaxed meandering pace of the book slightly distracting, as I kept looking for clues as to when the story would really get going. But by the end I realized it was more about observing and interrelating and allowing people to grow without judging and imposing on them.

[Marjanne · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a somewhat unusual story, but very interesting. I really liked the main character and her family. I also thought it was interesting to look inside Social Services a little more, but that it did not overwhelm the book. The author has a good point of view for parenting. I felt like I could have been good friends with the main character, Lucy. If I could have, I would give this book 3.5 stars. I will probably look into some of the author's other books. On the downside, there is a little language, not over the top, but definitely in some ways that are unnecessary.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Isabel is drifting back to sleep herself now, in the unaccustomed cold, sweet air of the little wooden shelter hut. She is thinking about Alex, who was lying there, awake, thinking about her father. She thinks about her own parents, and what would happen if one of them got sick. About how inside Alex there are all these memories and these worries and these thoughts and these fears--and they still add up to someone who can't read a map or use a compass. But still, inside Alex there is all that stuff." (135)

[Bobbi · Rating 4 out of 5]

A former foster child who was adopted by her sixth-grade teacher, Lucy Weiss is a pediatrician at a clinic specializing in foster kids. Lucy's deep (and occasionally unprofessional) devotion to her work brings her into contact and conflict with mothers like charismatic Delia, who eventually abandons her three kids—each named after one of the Von Trapp children. In Lucy's own family, her somewhat absent professor husband begs off of birthday party and soccer duties, leaving her as primary parent to precocious 10-year-old Isabel and possibly autistic six-year-old Freddy.

[Natasha · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm actually not sure why I continued to read this one after the first few chapters. It's hard to follow and jumps around a lot. While I was intrigued about the storyline at first, I found it was not what I expected. I thought it would be more about how the doctor determines whether or not to have children removed from their homes. But in fact, it doesn't really talk much about that at all. It's more about this doctor's home life than the foster care system.

[Catherine hewitt · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am a big fan of Perri Klass but this book felt kind of desperately thrown together in its plot line and denouement. Perhaps the plot reflects what she sees in her real-life job (pediatrician) and she wanted to use that material somehow in her writing. Overall she is a very talented writer and I've loved her short stories in the past. I would recommend skipping this book and reading some of her other works.

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

I can't decide if this is a 3 star or 2.5. The protaganist is a doctor who was in the foster care system as a child and now treats kids in the foster care system. The book reads more as a series of vignettes about her work life and home life (including lots of snarky comments about the other parents at her kids' prep school) and doesn't have much of a plot. I enjoyed reading about her work and the families she interacts with, but I wish there had been more of a plot.