Synopses & Reviews
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
"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
"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
"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 Author
Robin Romm is the author of the critically acclaimed short story collection, The Mother Garden, which was a finalist for the 2008 PEN USA Fiction Award. Born and raised in Eugene, Oregon, she currently lives in Berkeley, California, and New Mexico, where she is assistant professor of creative writing and literature at the College of Santa Fe.