Mercy: A Novel

by Joan Silber

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

Silber delivers a powerful exploration of friendship and human fragility in the face of fear. When one haunting decision changes his life, Ivan — and the rest of the world must live with the consequences of his actions.

Longlisted for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize

A rich and nuanced story beginning with a moment of fear and abandonment that will reverberate across decades and change the course of many lives, by a beloved PEN/Faulkner and National Book Critics Circle Award–winning author

In the gritty East Village of 1970s New York, Ivan and his best friend, Eddie, a popular local bartender, are dabbling in drugs following a short tour of Europe. One night, as Ivan and Eddie experiment with heroin, things go horribly wrong. In a panic, Ivan rushes Eddie to a crowded local ER and, believing his friend is about to die, makes the awful choice to leave him there.

This one act of abandonment haunts Ivan his entire life. He keeps this secret from his friends and later his family, forever searching for mercy from “a remorse that never dies.” Ivan’s decision also ripples across time through an extended community, affecting a host of other people unknowingly connected to that night.

Following a bold cast of characters across decades, and set against the changing social and sexual mores from the 1970s onward, Mercy is Silber’s most ambitious and expansive novel yet, proving once again how we are all connected in mysterious and often unknown ways.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781640097070
Publisher:	Catapult
Publication date:	09/02/2025
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	5.81(w) x 8.52(h) x 0.86(d)

About the Author

JOAN SILBER is the author of ten books of fiction. Her last book, Secrets of Happiness, was a Washington Post and Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year and an O Magazine Most Anticipated Book. Her novel, Improvement, was the winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award. She also received the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story. Her book, Fools, was long-listed for the National Book Award and was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award. Other works include The Size of the World, finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction, and Ideas of Heaven, finalist for the National Book Award and The Story Prize. She lives in New York and has taught at Sarah Lawrence College and in the Warren Wilson MFA program.

Hometown:

New York, NY

Date of Birth:

June 14, 1945

Place of Birth:

Newark, New Jersey

Education:

B.A., Sarah Lawrence College, 1967; M.A., New York University, 1980

Editorial Reviews

Longlisted for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize
Time, A Best Book of the Year
Amazon, A Best Book of the Month
Kirkus Reviews, 1 of 20 Best Books to Read in September
Library Journal, A Title to Watch
Literary Hub, A Most Anticipated Book of the Year

"Joan Silber is one of America’s most underappreciated literary treasures, and she just keeps getting better . . . [Silber] explores the themes of friendship and forgiveness with the self-assuredness of a master storyteller—which she undoubtedly is." —Michael Schaub, NPR

"Exhilarating . . . Mercy delivers voltage, tang and playfulness through a steady, probing interiority. More concerned with Eastern philosophy than Silber’s previous work, it feels burnished with wisdom both timeless and modern . . . Fresh, tart aperçus lace these pages . . . Silber’s smart, winning, intricately drawn story fleshes out a version of what Zorba the Greek famously called the 'full catastrophe': life, spirit, sex, death." —Joan Frank, The Washington Post

"Silber’s Mercy is not strained, pace Shakespeare, but stretches easily to include 'the mercy of untold secrets told.' Secrets abound among the characters whose brief encounter at a New York emergency room sets action across decades in motion: Ivan and Eddie, as well as Cara and Nina, are only tangentially connected. Yet Silber, winner of PEN/Faulkner and National Book Critics Circle awards, helps readers to see that even the most subtle moments can change lives and lead to peace.” —Bethanne Patrick, Los Angeles Times

"The alchemy of forgiveness is complex. Forgiveness, Silber seems to say, requires the right conditions. The person has to be open to it, but more importantly, they must rely on mercy. This, indeed, is the compelling and beautiful idea at the heart of Joan Silber’s novel: We must, dear reader, 'make room for mercy.'" —Jeffrey Condran, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

"Joan Silber’s Mercy is a touching study of a man who leaves a friend for dead, then follows the way one decision can haunt a lifetime." —Christopher Borrelli, Chicago Tribune

"A winning exploration of friendship and betrayal . . . In case you only read the first paragraph of this review, I’ll start with the takeaway: If you have never read Joan Silber, it is time you did . . . [T]he same readers who have made Ann Patchett, Elizabeth Strout, and Jennifer Egan household names would love her. If you are in this group, allow me to recommend Mercy as a jumping-off point for her delightful oeuvre. It could be that one of the things that’s so great about Silber’s work is also responsible for her cult status. Like its predecessors, Mercy is a novel-in-stories, a single fictional universe with a rotating cast of narrators, connected by threads of plot and meaning that unfold over the course of the book as they would in a novel. At the same time, the sections leap decades and continents to uniquely dazzling effect. . . If you are interested in friendship and betrayal, pain and relief, the power of sex, the ever-present mixture of love and misunderstanding between generations of a family, the process of coming to terms with one’s past—the characters of Mercy have some stories they would like to tell you." —Marion Winik, The Boston Globe

"Mercy is a captivating interconnected tale about guilt, regret, and the true meaning of forgiveness." —Shannon Carlon, Time

"A masterwork of how people complicate their own lives, and how they can grant or withhold mercy—with others and themselves—Mercy is the literary answer to the question of why the difficulty of building and maintaining relationships is a worthwhile venture. Silber shows that mercy is the space between love and death—a place that everyone can choose to live, if they are lucky, for a time." —Shannon Glass, The Coachella Review

"Mercy manages to be at once a street-smart account of the perils of shooting heroin as a party game among East Village friends and a Canterbury Tales of a carefully constructed set of characters whose paths cross in seemingly coincidental (but non-Dickensian) ways. The connections depicted, and their consequences, are not just seen through the eye of a hypodermic needle, but in exquisite accounts of the illimitable difficulties of relationships among family, lovers, and friends. There’s a theological element at work here, too—the title is no accident—though Silber lets it grow on us as the larger narrative unfolds . . . Leave it to the left-behind to find a road to forgiveness. Silber’s connection to our fallibility and resilience is as deep as it is welcome. Have mercy, indeed." —Paul Wilner, ZYZZYVA

"[A] mature, sophisticated and thoughtful work . . . Mercy is a quiet and expansive novel, traveling far beyond that NYC hospital and across decades and generations, but always keeping people and relationships front and center." —Norah Piehl, Bookreporter.com

"Joan Silber is a contemporary genius at creating artful stories of a multitude of characters who ricochet in cunning ways, crossing generations and continents . . . Mercy [...] is equally effortless, empathetic, engrossing." —Jane Ciabattari, Literary Hub

"Silber—the great chronicler of the webs of love and coincidence that connect people—turns her attention to drugs and sex and mercy . . . Like a favorite special in a beloved restaurant, Silber again serves her unique flavor of reading joy." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"Silber is an expert at evoking a time and place in a few brushstrokes, especially 1970s New York City. This is a short novel that addresses some very human themes, like regret and betrayal, while also being threaded with humor and plainspoken intimacy. Some chapters feel like a conversation with an old friend. Silber’s canvas may be small, but like her Secrets of Happiness and Improvement before it, Mercy feels like a complete world." —BookPage (starred review)

"Alluring . . . Silber sheds light on how people are shaped by where they come from and who they know." —Publishers Weekly

"Joan Silber’s sweeping yet intimate novel traces the delicate patterns by which others, often from afar and unknowingly, may determine our innermost longings and even our fate. Mercy is a profound, gorgeously written reflection on identity, friendship, and love. A book that keeps echoing long after turning the last page." —Hernan Diaz, author of Trust, Winner of the Pulitzer Prize

From the Publisher