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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A good read, August 1, 2006
This review is from: To Love Mercy (Paperback)
To Love Mercy is a heartfelt story about two boys who grow up in different racial and economic backgrounds, where segregation and ignorance make up the landscape of society. They become the center of a brewing storm between their families.
Written in a very unique narrative style, Frank S. Joseph invites the reader to a neighborhood called Bronzeville during the '40s in Chicago, Illinois. The lives of pre-teens Steve Feinberg and Jessie "Sass" Owens Trimble intersect in a parking lot after a White Sox game, when Sass, his brothers and their friends accost Steve, his father and grandfather for money. What began as taunting in order to distract them and pick their pockets, ends up with Sass knocked out cold with a broken nose and a lost heirloom.
Steve wants to do the right things and comes alone to the hospital to visit Sass. What proceeds is a beautifully written story from a child's perspective on race, money and friendship--and God. The intimate interviews Frank had with black Southerners who migrated to Chicago and those who lived in Bronzeville are reflected in the careful details of the characters.
The lack of punctuations in the story line was disconcerting at first, yet it became freeing as I found myself invited into the private thoughts of Dora, Steve and Sass. There is a reverence about how Frank leads the readers into their personal struggles, fears and anguish. It is obvious his love for them kept the integrity of this novel intact.
I finished the book is four days, reading it every chance I could. I was disappointed when it ended because I felt I was leaving new friends behind.
Armchair Interviews says: For a debut novel this was very well done.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
So engrossing this non-reader could barely put it down, May 25, 2006
This review is from: To Love Mercy (Paperback)
I read so much in my work that I rarely read for pleasure. But "To Love Mercy" so engrossed me that I finished it in just 3 nights (it was better than anything on TV and I really do like TV). Frank Joseph does an amazing job of capturing the diverse and distinct voices -- black and white, young and old -- of Chicago, circa 1948. The story is told by four of the book's characters, in their own distinctive voices and perspectives. The adventures of Steve and Sass through Chicago are a great adventure -- Riverview Park back when it was so restrictly racially segregated; playing penner -- possibly a unique Chicago schoolyard ball game; the lakefront; the CTA; Sass going downtown for the first time -- quite an adventure that the author captures with obvious affection for the city. A few surprises along the way -- and I don't want to reveal any of them. So enjoy this wonderous journey through 1948 Chicago when the WORLD CHAMPION WHITE SOX (get over it already Cub diehards) played at a park really called Comiskey.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Can be ranked with other great tales about a great if merciless city., April 25, 2006
This review is from: To Love Mercy (Paperback)
Frank Joseph has written a remarkable story about the tough racially charged culture of South Side Chicago in the late 1940s through the eyes of two children (both boys, one white, one black), an older black woman with ties to both their families and the other people they encounter. As some one who grew up there I can attest that the attitudes, the prejudices and the blindnesses that all too frequently trump all (or nearly all) of his characters' better instincts have been admirably captured in this compelling tale.
The maxim "to write what you know" has been well served by this story. The author's own experiences as a child at this time and his meticulous eye for detail -places, radio ads, local soft drink brands, the rides at Riverview amusement park, etc. --enrich the story but don't get in the way. If you grew up there around the time this story occurs, you will only enjoy this more. If not, the interviews with many former residents of "Bronzeville"-Chicago's equivalent of Harlem-that the author includes as part of this book will give you some valuable local insights.
I have not seized on a book so avidly since discovering Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time which transformed what was in fact a rather ordinary tale by conveying it through the remarkable insights of its autistic main character. Like that book, the interactions of the viewpoints and emotions of the two boys (both 10) regarding their bigger world and its racial baggage (the white kid good willed but na?ve and confused, the black kid already toughened and wary ) let emerge truths that the adults can no longer grasp, or perhaps more accurately, no longer want to. This is all conveyed through a very interesting narrative style that employs extensive dialogue or interior ponderings to stress the dilemmas, fears and confusions of its three main characters. (This story cries to be a radio play or other spoken word rendition--Studs Terkel where are you!?)
If you are interested in Chicago and its history but did not grow up there, this story will help you understand a little better why Chicago became the most segregated city in America with some of the uglier racial flash points of the 1960s and the bitterness of its politics following the election of Harold Washington in the 1983.
Still, this is not a despairing tale. Much is achieved by both boys in the short span over which this narrative takes place, but this story does not really have a happy ending. Even though the two main families will discover they are tied together in numerous unexpected ways, the author, respecting the realities of the times and the place, does not promise all will be well if only this or only that. What this story conveyed to me, however, is that there were possibilities that could be grasped but with great difficulty and that perhaps either one or both these two boys might be end up playing their part in the movements of the 60s and after to change the world pictured here.
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