THE MERCIES – KIRAN MILLWOOD HARGRAVE – REVIEW

How ironic titles can be. A commissioner who doesn’t understand what he is commissioned to do. A wife who knows no love from her husband. A friend who would be more. And, above all, mercies that are nothing of the sort.

Taking its premise from the real storm that devastated Eastern Finnmark in 1621, killing most of the male population and leading, in time, to a series of witch trials, the Mercies is an atmospheric tale of a town that learns to survive outside society’s norms before the powers that be force convention back on them in the most brutal way possible.

In its sense of cloying pressure, it feels like a successor to Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. The feeling of claustrophobia is constant but this is a society not just scared of closed spaces but of almost everything and difference especially. When villager Maren finally screams into the icy wind, it is an outburst the reader realises they too have been holding at bay.

The monotony and boredom of days, particularly women’s days, is skillfully rendered. Treeless, cold Vardo is a place of survival not leisure, but the puritanical rot goes deeper. Even once essential tasks are accomplished, women are expected to sit quietly rather than find amusement. Prayer at the town’s Kirke is one of the few ‘recreations’ permitted, although later, attendance will become as much part of survival as leisure.

The overwhelming sensation is one of silence: of men who followed the siren call of the sea and left their women to the quiet of a changed world; of an absence of information that affects the story’s protagonists in different ways. For much of the book, the town’s women are left in the dark about newly arrived commissioner Absalom Cornet’s intentions. Cornet’s new wife, Ursa will only later discover her husband’s special set of skills. Cornet himself is a victim of a lack of information, unsure initially of his purpose after sailing to this barren land. He will eventually find that purpose in a witchhunt, making his name by erasing the lives of women tried for a crime they have no knowledge of.

And the town’s women, rather than standing fast with each other, will find in Cornet’s cleanse a way of quietening other voices. After crisis, it is easy to succumb to zealotry. Boredom helps too. So it is that even when the storm wipes out Vardo’s male population, there are those who would rather women starve than fish, who would trouble themselves more with their fellow villagers’ clothing and deportment than their skills or kindness.

Written in a trendy third person present tense, the narrative voice is a fine choice for the novel. The present tense lends a real immediacy and sense of danger. The third person adds just enough detachment, reminding us of the barriers that exist between Christian and Sami, between Absolom and Ursa and between all the women of Vardo who society demands remain prom and proper and give nothing of themselves except to their families.

The Mercies achieves the sense of cloying horror it is going for. Nonetheless it is tempting to feel that it might have eked it out even further with slightly altered pacing. It takes some time for the witch-hunt proper to begin, although the reader can sense the inevitability of it. But drawing it out for so long, having Absolom target his victims at once rather than picking them off slowly makes the ending feel rushed. Similarly, the love story, long hinted at, finally makes an appearance, but riks feeling almost like an afterthought.

These are minor quibbles though in what is a beautifully written book. The Mercies will break over you with all the force of the storm it describes.