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A startling and tender portrait of one family's struggle to make peace with their son's death.
An ingeniously layered narrative, told over the course of one week, Eddie Joyce's debut novel masterfully depicts an Italian-Irish American family on Staten Island and their complicated emotional history. Ten years after the loss of Bobby - the Amendola family's youngest son - everyone is still struggling to recover from the firefighter's unexpected death. Bobby's mother Gail; his widow Tina; his older brothers Peter, the corporate lawyer, and Franky, the misfit; and his father Michael have all dealt with their grief in different ways. But as the family gathers together for Bobby Jr.'s birthday party, they must each find a way to accept a new man in Tina's life while reconciling their feelings for their lost loved one.
Presented through multiple points of view, Small Mercies explores the conflicts and deep attachments that exist within families. Heart-wrenching and profoundly relatable, Joyce's debut is a love letter to Staten Island and a deeply affecting portrait of an American family.
"[T]here's comfort in this kind of predictable fare, and it's clear that Joyce, a native of Staten Island, has deep affection for his characters and the pride they feel in their local rituals." - Publishers Weekly
"This assured debut novel is an insightful psychological tale of family and of love and loss. ... He also pens a love letter to the forgotten borough of Staten Island, evoking its deep community ties with heartfelt emotion." - Booklist
"The novel unpacks a lot of emotional baggage (even without the 9/11 references), but readers will get to know these characters and care about them to the very last page." - Kirkus
"Eddie Joyce's terrific first novel is so American that the story might as well have taken place at the base of the Statue of Liberty. His Amendola family and their beloved Staten Island may be flawed, but they represent what's best and most necessary in the American character, what our tired and poor still yearn for." - Richard Russo, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Empire Falls
"Eddie Joyce's triumphant first novel rings like a bell: for Staten Island, for husbands and wives, for mothers and sons. This is a beautiful book, and Joyce's deep, complicated love for his characters makes them seem like they could amble off the page and into the nearest bar." - Emma Straub, New York Times bestselling author of The Vacationers
"A warm and absorbing family saga from Staten Island ... Eddie Joyce's big-hearted generosity is apparent in every word. He cares deeply about his people, so we will too." - Stewart O'Nan, author of West of Sunset
"The high-spirited characters in this book have such a good time even when grieving that they may almost make you think about moving there if they aren't careful." - Matthew Thomas, New York Times bestselling author of We Are Not Ourselves
This information about Small Mercies was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Eddie Joyce was born and raised on Staten Island. A graduate of Harvard University and Georgetown Law Center, he practiced law in Manhattan for ten years. When his twin daughters were born in 2009, he left the legal profession to stay home and help raise them while pursuing his dream of being a writer. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and three daughters. Follow @eddiejjoyce on Twitter.
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