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Mercy Seat
A stunning work of fiction maps a toxic, triangular love affair against the topography of Wales during a 1984 miner’s strike Attempting to escape his childhood and youth in the South Wales valleys of the 1980s, Luke drifts to a seaside town and into a marriage and fatherhood for which he is unprepared. The arrival of a stranger—his wife’s troubled sister, Christine—will change each of their lives forever. Drawn into the unspoken, destructive mystery at the heart of the two women’s childhoods, Luke finds his own understanding of himself and others unraveling. His confession is a compelling story of passion, loss, regret, and the need to find redemption from the haunting power of the past.
199 pages, Paperback
First published February 23, 2015
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
September 29, 2019
Beautifully written but so bleak and lacking emotion on the part of the narrator.
July 1, 2024
honestly, i was a little disappointed. this book massively lacks depth and frankly nothing happens. the narrative follows the perspective of luke who can best be described as husband of jenny and brother in law of christine. that is about as much as his character can be described as.
this book felt a lot like a man wrote it from a man's perspective with the desire to write interesting female characters but without the ability to understand women. it fell exceptionally flat. you never understand the female characters' dark side, not much is clarified about their edges, luke has virtually no edge, and eventually the narrative feels like a soap opera.
this book felt a lot like a man wrote it from a man's perspective with the desire to write interesting female characters but without the ability to understand women. it fell exceptionally flat. you never understand the female characters' dark side, not much is clarified about their edges, luke has virtually no edge, and eventually the narrative feels like a soap opera.
May 31, 2016
Mercy Seat is one of those novels you can’t help but let cut through you. It oscillates between a kind of meditative poise and an electric tension, seamlessly crafted and deeply felt. Set in a coastal town in Wales, the novel is a first-person narrative told by Luke, a young man who finds himself a husband and father having barely left home. From an unspecified time in the future, Luke tries to make sense of his life, constructing memories into a narrative which has at its centre his doomed relationships with his wife Jenny and her sister Christine.
Though Luke’s course is fixed from the beginning, At several key places I was gripped by a fury to grab him by the shoulders and shake some sense into him. At every turn he avoids making decisions and seems to allow himself to be swept away by circumstance. The central idea of the novel is outlined in the centre of the novel (quite fitting that). Luke laments,
'while the life of the mind can be mysterious and subtle, the life of the body is as comic and crude and predictable as graffiti. The one life carries the other into all kinds of slapstick and disasters, over and over again; and the body’s is the stronger life, and does the carrying, whatever else we like to pretend.'
While I think this is a bit unfair to graffiti, it is key to understanding what Price is exploring in the novel. No matter how vexed I became at Luke, I could never hate him. Blindly following his animal instincts because he couldn’t make sense of anything else, he is painfully relatable. His status as storyteller and the shame he feels reflecting upon his own desires, is what separates him from the animals.
Despite the relatively small scale of the novel and the absence of high drama, it never loses forward momentum. The tension is masterfully sustained throughout. On a micro level this is achieved through pristine imagery and carefully orchestrated sentences; and on a macro level through narrative bait-and-switches, leaving one precise past moment at chapter’s end to be transported to Luke’s present day philosophising.
The dark history of Jenny and Christine, which can account for so much of the unhappiness which unfolds throughout Mercy Seat, is hinted at here and there; never entirely spelt out. At times this is incredibly frustrating, but I when I considered what exactly I wanted to find out about their past (probably nothing too pleasant) perhaps it is best left unsaid. Price shows in the course of the narrative, it is not a simple case of one bad father, or two; one lonely childhood, or even three, which ripples through through time to break down future relationships.
There is a deterministic quality to the novel which leaves clues for so many possible explanations to the questions it raises about its cast. Why Luke isn’t able to communicate his feelings, why Christine ends up with them after so many years, why Jenny is afraid to leave their son alone with her. It seems to arrive at the conclusion that whatever the reasons, or whatever we reason to be the reasons, we are not in control of our own journeys, and are simply along for the ride. Our solace in the face of that existential dread is the attempt to understand, even if we are hopeless of ever succeeding.
Though Luke’s course is fixed from the beginning, At several key places I was gripped by a fury to grab him by the shoulders and shake some sense into him. At every turn he avoids making decisions and seems to allow himself to be swept away by circumstance. The central idea of the novel is outlined in the centre of the novel (quite fitting that). Luke laments,
'while the life of the mind can be mysterious and subtle, the life of the body is as comic and crude and predictable as graffiti. The one life carries the other into all kinds of slapstick and disasters, over and over again; and the body’s is the stronger life, and does the carrying, whatever else we like to pretend.'
While I think this is a bit unfair to graffiti, it is key to understanding what Price is exploring in the novel. No matter how vexed I became at Luke, I could never hate him. Blindly following his animal instincts because he couldn’t make sense of anything else, he is painfully relatable. His status as storyteller and the shame he feels reflecting upon his own desires, is what separates him from the animals.
Despite the relatively small scale of the novel and the absence of high drama, it never loses forward momentum. The tension is masterfully sustained throughout. On a micro level this is achieved through pristine imagery and carefully orchestrated sentences; and on a macro level through narrative bait-and-switches, leaving one precise past moment at chapter’s end to be transported to Luke’s present day philosophising.
The dark history of Jenny and Christine, which can account for so much of the unhappiness which unfolds throughout Mercy Seat, is hinted at here and there; never entirely spelt out. At times this is incredibly frustrating, but I when I considered what exactly I wanted to find out about their past (probably nothing too pleasant) perhaps it is best left unsaid. Price shows in the course of the narrative, it is not a simple case of one bad father, or two; one lonely childhood, or even three, which ripples through through time to break down future relationships.
There is a deterministic quality to the novel which leaves clues for so many possible explanations to the questions it raises about its cast. Why Luke isn’t able to communicate his feelings, why Christine ends up with them after so many years, why Jenny is afraid to leave their son alone with her. It seems to arrive at the conclusion that whatever the reasons, or whatever we reason to be the reasons, we are not in control of our own journeys, and are simply along for the ride. Our solace in the face of that existential dread is the attempt to understand, even if we are hopeless of ever succeeding.
April 10, 2015
This was a passionate story that takes you to amazing places. The writing is incredibly talented and accomplished. After reading it, I only want to pick it up again.
September 22, 2015
Bleak but brilliant.
January 29, 2016
Often grim, but brilliant. Price is a master of subtlety. Just like 'Furnace', there's loads going on between the lines. He can even make someone making a cup of tea suspenseful.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews