Review: The Mercy Rule, by Perri Klass

I was sent a copy of Perri Klass's novel The Mercy Rule by the publisher. I hadn't read her work before, but I had heard good things about her. I also was intrigued by the fact that Klass is a practicing physician as well as a novelist. I thought that would bring an interesting perspective to her work, and I was right.

The Mercy Rule is about a pediatrician, Lucy Weiss, who lives with her professor husband in a suburb of Boston, where she is busy working and raising two kids who attend private school and play weekend sports, and trying to find a balance between all these things. But, surprisingly, Lucy is also a child of the foster care system. Her mother died when she was small, and her father gave her over to be raised in the foster care system. Now, as a doctor, Lucy serves children like her, who are in the foster care system, or who are at risk for being put into that system.

The novel's narrative is split between Lucy's home life and her professional life. Part of the time Lucy is dealing with addicted or otherwise neglectful mothers and trying to assess the needs of their children, and part of the time she is struggling to raise her own two children. But the parts are tied together by the central theme of raising children, and how difficult it is under the best of circumstances.

As a mother of three, I really related to this novel. Lucy's demographic is in some ways similar to mine, and I laughed and cried over many of the poignant parenting moments in the book. It feels very authentic, almost like a memoir (though I know I'm making an inference here, as Klass is a physician, and clearly a parent, as well as a writer, and the main character is also a physician and parent who writes, at least as a hobby), and its genuine quality was part of what made it involving.

I recognized so many of the parenting challenges that Klass details in the book. Lucy has two difficult children, a girl going from tween to adolescent, and a 7-year-old boy who is eccentric, to put it kindly. Klass wisely resists "diagnosing" or labeling the kids, but they definitely have some issues. And, like Lucy, we all face bewildering issues as parents, even if they aren't exactly the same as the ones Lucy faces, and we all wish we could smooth the way for our children and help them navigate every awkward social situation, even though we know we shouldn't.

While I enjoyed the parts about Lucy's family life, I was also completely drawn into the parts about Lucy's professional life. The interaction between Lucy and the families of her patients was fascinating, and I would have liked to see even more of this. My problem with the book was that it lacked a clear story. Yes, many things happen, but there is no arc to the story--it's made up of a series of episodes, but it doesn't quite have a cohesive plot. However, since I found the episodes compelling, the lack of plot wasn't a major problem for me--it's more just an observation about the style, and a warning for those who don't like books that aren't story-driven.

Overall, I was pleasantly surprised by how involving I found this warts-and-all look at parenting, and how much I related to its main character, a modern woman trying to balance work and family, and sometimes just barely hanging on to both.