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More copies of this ISBNThis title in other editionseBook editionsThe Mercy Papers: A Memoir of Three Weeksby Robin Romm
Staff Pick
The Mercy Papers earns a place right alongside Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking and Elizabeth McCracken's An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination — three canonical books about confronting loss. Robin Romm's unflinching memoir will befriend readers for years to come. Synopses & ReviewsPublisher Comments:When Robin Romm's The Mother Garden was published, the New York Times Book Review called her a close-up magician, saying, hers is the oldest kind of magic] we know: the ordinary incantation of words and stories to help us navigate the darkness and finally to hold the end at bay. In her searing memoir The Mercy Papers, Romm uses this magic to expand the weeks before her mother's death into a story about a daughter in the moments before and after loss. With a striking mix of humor and honesty, Romm ushers us into a world where an obstinate hospice nurse tries to heal through pamphlets and a yelping grandfather squirrels away money in a shoe-shine kit. Untrained dogs scamper about as strangers and friends rally around death, offering sympathy as they clamor for attention. The pillbox turns quickly into a metaphor for order; questions about medication turn to musings about God. The mundane and spiritual melt together as Romm reveals the sharp truths that lurk around every corner and captures, with great passion, the awe, fear, and fury of a daughter losing her mother. The Mercy Papers was started in the midst of heartbreak, and not originally intended for an audience. The result is a raw, unsentimental book that reverberates with humanity. Robin Romm has created a tribute to family and an indelible portrait that will speak to anyone who has ever loved and lost. Review:"In this powerful narrative, author Romm (The Mother Garden) chronicles the weeks before her mother's death, drawing from it the story of her long years spent battling and eventually succumbing to cancer. In elegant prose, Romm celebrates their strong relationship and finds ways to cope, but doesn't flinch from exploring her darker feelings: rage at abandonment, resentment toward her physician father, frustration with a well-meaning but ineffectual boyfriend. The sad reality unreels in elegant prose and precise metaphors; hospice worker Barb 'administers more morphine, more Percocet, more fentanyl... building a boat to sail my mother out.' Originally begun as a personal journal-not for publication-Romm's heartbreak is writ large and clear, as are the details of her mother's painful end and her family's struggle to cope ('we've all been placed at the mercy of her disease... it's trapped us in this house'). Anyone touched by cancer, or who has seen a loved one in hospice care, will find this painful, absorbing and likely therapeutic; unfortunately, the story peters out once Romm's mother passes, leaving her readers, perhaps on purpose, unmistakably empty." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.) Review:"With artfulness, candor and unexpected but welcome wit, Romm tells their mother/daughter story through nine years of flashbacks since Jackie's diagnosis at 46, when Romm was 19.... The raw honesty of this book may be as healing to read as it must have been to write." Elizabeth Fishel, San Francisco Chronicle Review:"There is comfort in the unflinching honesty of Robin Romm's astonishing memoir. I sought such truth after my daughter died, and grew angry at the platitudes, the cowardice, the lack of acknowledgment of what life and death hold. But Robin faces it head on, and I am grateful to her for being brave enough to share her story." Ann Hood Review:"Romm's sheer firepower sets her [memoir] apart, capturing all the raw messiness behind her agony. Grade: A." Tina Jordan, Entertainment Weekly Review:"Poignant... A piercing, heartbreaking reminder that 'loss doesn't end.'" Kirkus Reviews (starred review) Review:"A furious blaze of a book." Leah Hager Cohen, New York Times Book Review Review:"Robin Romm takes on the hardest subject (the death of a person you can't live without) the hardest way (no easy answers, no gratuitous nod toward redemption, and not a whisper of sentimentality). Only a very fine writer could create this slam dance of sorrow, rage, helplessness, and laugh-out-loud humor; a book that is unapologetically raw and undeniably artful at once." Pam Houston Review:"I love this passionate and beautifully written memoir, The Mercy Papers. Every sentence rings with furious love and loss." Abigail Thomas Review:"The Mercy Papers is an important work in a young voice. It speaks truth to complacency. But its perspective remains the narrow one of a child." Karen R. Long, Cleveland Plain Dealer About the AuthorRobin Romm was born and raised in Eugene, Oregon. Her short stories have appeared in a number of publications, including Tin House, One Story, and The Threepenny Review. She was a 2006 MacDowell Fellow and lives in Berkeley, California. What Our Readers Are SayingAdd a comment for a chance to win!Average customer rating based on 2 comments:
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