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This Awful Small Mercy of Miss Miriam Malone
The austere, mediaeval village of Small Mercy is a place where function is all. There is no colour, no joy. Nobody dares even to dream.
One bleak night, a stranger, John Dawlish, decides to pay a visit. Dawlish is all that Small Mercy is not. His presence alone is at odds with The Constitution, which prohibits all newcomers, especially those as bizarre as he is. When the stranger at last departs, the villagers notice that two local children are also missing.
It is when the cruel Auditor, Franklin Singe, is gathering his party for the hunt, that something truly astonishing happens in that place where the wheel stubbornly remains the height of technology - a mobile phone begins to ring…
This Awful Small Mercy of Miss Miriam Malone is a novel about the power of imagination; where nothing is how it seems. Not by a long way.
One bleak night, a stranger, John Dawlish, decides to pay a visit. Dawlish is all that Small Mercy is not. His presence alone is at odds with The Constitution, which prohibits all newcomers, especially those as bizarre as he is. When the stranger at last departs, the villagers notice that two local children are also missing.
It is when the cruel Auditor, Franklin Singe, is gathering his party for the hunt, that something truly astonishing happens in that place where the wheel stubbornly remains the height of technology - a mobile phone begins to ring…
This Awful Small Mercy of Miss Miriam Malone is a novel about the power of imagination; where nothing is how it seems. Not by a long way.
274 pages, Kindle Edition
Published January 17, 2022
3 people want to read
About the author
Stuart Ayris
17 books133 followersI was born in the Summer of 1969 in Dagenham, just on the border of East London. School was largely unproductive so his early adult years were spent putting up stalls at Romford Market, working in a record shop, gardening and road sweeping.
After resigning from an insurance company to play in a band, I found myself unemployed for two years in the early nineties. In 1997, I qualified as a psychiatric nurse.
I am the author of the following novels:
Tollesbury Time Forever (2012)
The Bird That Nobody Sees (2012)
I Woke Up This Morning (2013)
The Buddhas of Borneo (2013)
The Magical Tragical Life of Edward Jarvis Huggins (2014)
Elysian Wonderland (2015)
Merzougaville, Baby (2015)
Albion Calling (2016)
Bolivian Rhapsody (2018)
This Awful Small Mercy of Miss Miriam Mallone (2022)
The Truth About Trees (Exp 2024/5)
Catalonia Tryptico Blues (Work in progress)
In terms of writing, my heroes are Jack Kerouac, John Steinbeck, James Joyce Kris Kristofferson, Bob Dylan and Tom Waits.
Please do get in touch if you would like to discuss anything about my novels or if I can be of any help at all!
After resigning from an insurance company to play in a band, I found myself unemployed for two years in the early nineties. In 1997, I qualified as a psychiatric nurse.
I am the author of the following novels:
Tollesbury Time Forever (2012)
The Bird That Nobody Sees (2012)
I Woke Up This Morning (2013)
The Buddhas of Borneo (2013)
The Magical Tragical Life of Edward Jarvis Huggins (2014)
Elysian Wonderland (2015)
Merzougaville, Baby (2015)
Albion Calling (2016)
Bolivian Rhapsody (2018)
This Awful Small Mercy of Miss Miriam Mallone (2022)
The Truth About Trees (Exp 2024/5)
Catalonia Tryptico Blues (Work in progress)
In terms of writing, my heroes are Jack Kerouac, John Steinbeck, James Joyce Kris Kristofferson, Bob Dylan and Tom Waits.
Please do get in touch if you would like to discuss anything about my novels or if I can be of any help at all!
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
January 28, 2022
Disclaimer - this is the first of Stuarts books that I've read, and I am his future daughter-in-law. TL;DR - It's brilliant!
From the moment I finished this novel, all I could think about was the first time I met Stuart.
8 years ago, I was placed before a tall, aggressively cheerful man, who was barefoot, a few months shy of his annual haircut, and wearing shorts with some type of cricket shirt.
He jumped, still barefoot, into the driver’s seat of a somewhat dilapidated VW bus, where my future fiancée, her brother, Stuart’s wife, and I, followed.
During our journey around a roundabout, the bus gave up the pretence of safety and fully flung open the sliding door my partner was leant up against, only barely caught by her older brother who then held the door shut for the rest of the journey.
Stuart’s response to the possible life threatening incident? “Yeah, it does that sometimes, just keep a hold of it, we almost lost you there Jamie!” to rounds of giggles from the bus’s inhabitants.
While I can’t entirely remember, I am positive he made some reference to cricket.
This entire novel reminds me pleasantly of that day and that first encounter, with serious and splendid situations that are dark and uncanny, that increase your heart rate with a sense of foreboding, interspersed with a ridiculous humour that keeps you engaged in whatever nonsense happens next. This entire book felt very “Stuart” to me, though in terms of style, I was reminded of a Douglas Adams-esque story telling.
In short, and these were the words that I said when I finished, it was bloody brilliant!
From the moment I finished this novel, all I could think about was the first time I met Stuart.
8 years ago, I was placed before a tall, aggressively cheerful man, who was barefoot, a few months shy of his annual haircut, and wearing shorts with some type of cricket shirt.
He jumped, still barefoot, into the driver’s seat of a somewhat dilapidated VW bus, where my future fiancée, her brother, Stuart’s wife, and I, followed.
During our journey around a roundabout, the bus gave up the pretence of safety and fully flung open the sliding door my partner was leant up against, only barely caught by her older brother who then held the door shut for the rest of the journey.
Stuart’s response to the possible life threatening incident? “Yeah, it does that sometimes, just keep a hold of it, we almost lost you there Jamie!” to rounds of giggles from the bus’s inhabitants.
While I can’t entirely remember, I am positive he made some reference to cricket.
This entire novel reminds me pleasantly of that day and that first encounter, with serious and splendid situations that are dark and uncanny, that increase your heart rate with a sense of foreboding, interspersed with a ridiculous humour that keeps you engaged in whatever nonsense happens next. This entire book felt very “Stuart” to me, though in terms of style, I was reminded of a Douglas Adams-esque story telling.
In short, and these were the words that I said when I finished, it was bloody brilliant!
Displaying 1 of 1 review