Frederick Langlois could be that geeky 17-year-old found in every high school — the one who closely clutches his poem-filled notebook, who feels a bit too deeply, who’s just a little too old for his years. But Frederick isn’t in high school. He’s in a hospital ward with other critically ill adolescents, dying of bone cancer. Mercury Under the Tongue chronicles his short stay there, from his distant but friendly relationship with his therapist through comic moments in the ward and his emergent friendships with other teenage patients. Some survive, others are lost, and at the end, Frederick must make a final reckoning with himself and his family, one that is at once dispassionate and deeply felt. Avoiding both misty stoicism and made-for-TV bathos, the book exposes the fallible body as the humanizing factor that grounds spirited adolescent talk, creating a believable, likable protagonist while weaving a compelling, lyrical story.
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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Québécois novelist Trudel convincingly conjures the bitterly sad imagination of a 17-year-old boy dying of hip-bone sarcoma. Lying in a Canadian hospital near the Missiquoi Bay, Frédéric has a kind of dark faith in himself. Bored and often in terrible pain in his bachelor pad, he tools around the corridors in his wheelchair with other young patients and has faith in what he knows, which is that he is neither good nor bad, and that his soul will die with him. He fantasizes about his well-meaning but ineffectual psychotherapist, Maryse Bouthillier. With a 15-year-old leukemia patient he meets, Marilou Desjardins, he writes poetry and imagines sharing love, marriage and children. In his heart, Frédéric is furious at his bad luck and angry at such visitors as the Abbé Guillemette, who lectures about belief and sin when Frédéric cannot see any use for hope or penance, perversely signing his poetry after an 18th-century Italian poet, Metastasio. Frédéric refuses to entertain self-pity, and his voice is immediate, winning and utterly believable until the end. (Feb.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
“I’d give my life for you if I had one.” Not yet 17 and dying of cancer, Frederick clowns around with other young patients in the hospital ward, mocks the nurses who think his relationship with disease is “unhealthy,” rages at armchair therapy about the stages of grief, and refuses to believe in God (“Why not eternal life on earth rather than in heaven?”). The story is accented by Frederick’s occasional short poems, but Sylvain’s narrative itself is just as eloquent—hilarity on the edge of heartbreak, as Frederick glimpses his psychiatrist’s cleavage and dreams of a future that will not be. Pity is the worst; he hates the therapeutic clowns with their “kitchy-kitchy kooing.” Translated from the French and a prize winner in Quebec, this lyrical blend of farce, fury, and sorrow makes an enthralling read-aloud and would be a natural for book groups. True to the teen viewpoint, the physical detail is universal: to wake up happy and then suddenly remember you are terminally ill; to feel only bitter irony every time someone utters the cliché, “Is it nice out?” --Hazel Rochman
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Courtesy of Teens Read Too,
By TeensReadToo "Eat. Drink. Read. Be Merrier." (All Over the US & Canada) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Mercury Under My Tongue: A Novel (Paperback)
MERCURY UNDER MY TONGUE is not a book for the weak of heart. It is a powerful story told through they eyes of a seventeen-year-old boy dying of bone cancer. Frederick Langlois is in a Canadian hospital. He knows he is dying and is doing what he can to survive.
Frederick's family comes to visit, but he has little to say. Instead, he has thoughts inside his head of what he would prefer to say to them. He has gone so far as to write letters to each member of his family. His plan is to have one of the survivors on his floor mail them off on the one-year anniversary of his death. His only solace is the poetry that he writes, but shares with no one except a fifteen-year-old leukemia patient, Marilou. The poetry shows another glimpse into Frederick's thoughts as he faces his final days. Mr. Trudel writes a sad, moving story of a boy wanting more out of life than the hand he was dealt. Frederick shows anger, regret, love, joy, and, against his better judgment, acceptance, as his time draws nearer to the end. He rarely shares his pain of cancer with the reader, but there are snippets of the discomfort that he struggles with on a daily basis. The story is translated from its original French but still flows beautifully and eloquently. If nothing else, Mr. Trudel's work will make you glad you are alive, and want to live the most in each day. Reviewed by: Jaglvr
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
gripping, savage and honest,
By
This review is from: Mercury Under My Tongue: A Novel (Paperback)
Mercury Under My Tongue is a short but powerful novel. Frederick is a terminally ill seventeen year old, and the cancer that poisons him, turning his hip into thin, near-transparent sliver of bone, serves as both adversary and muse.
Wiser, more worldly and educated than the typical seventeen year old, Frederick still has his moments of pure adolescence - whether that be sneaking glimpses down his therapist's shirt or begging for change to spend on the vending machines. His running monologue rampages against God, but he is drawn to religious people. His poignant not-quite-romance with Marilou is heart wrenching. And his thoughts are often venomous, cursing the world and his place in it. Not for the depressed, this is an engrossing story and a very believable look into the mind of someone who's life is being cut short without reason.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Honest narrative of a teenager dying of cancer,
By
This review is from: Mercury Under My Tongue: A Novel (Paperback)
Frederic is a 16 year old boy who has end-stage bone cancer, and he spends his last days in his "bachelor pad" on the hematology/oncology ward of a hospital in Montreal. He is frequently in pain, and the few friends he has on the wards are too consumed with their own morbidity to provide him with much solace or understanding. Frederick's poetry does provide an escape, and it links him to a beautiful girl there who is battling leukemia. His family visits him infrequently, as he simultaneously seeks their comfort and pushes them away. His aloof manner hides a fear of the death he knows will come soon.
He is filled with angst, and his irrational rants followed by brilliant insights into himself and others rings true. His prose flows poetically, although it is frequently searing and acerbic: "I haven't said anything about the most hideous days, the days when the pain rips me open and leave my eyes scalding and glassy, my face decomposed, my bones bare and my forehead greasy and my dirty hair clings to it like seaweed and my damp pajamas stink of sweat. When the nurses come to turn my bed upside down so they can bleach the sheets in which I've sweated blood and lymph, I'm always afraid they'll discover a Turin Shroud that would dehumanize me, like some kind of Easter Sunday, like the resurrection of Christ who spoiled everything by easing the pain of the Passion, by canceling the sacrifice of Good Friday." This was an tough but honest look into the mind of a teenager who realizes that his life will end before it has begun, and is highly recommended.
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