Critics' Opinion:
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Published Oct 2011
272 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
In New York, a young black porter struggles through his first day on the job - a staggering assignment aboard Robert F. Kennedy's funeral train. In Pennsylvania, a woman creates a tangle of lies to sneak away from her disapproving husband and pay her respects to the slain senator, dragging her child with her. In Maryland, a wounded young soldier awaits a newspaper interview that his parents hope will restore his damaged self-esteem. And in Washington, an Irish nanny in town to interview with the Kennedy family must reconcile the lost opportunity and the chance to start her life anew.
In this stunning debut, David Rowell depicts disparate lives united by an extraordinary commemoration, irrevocably changed as Kennedy's funeral train makes its solemn journey from New York to Washington.
"Though Rowell is a respected journalist, he has a novelist's eye for the crucial, telling detail. In clean, elegant prose he recreates the lives of individuals mired in one of the most turbulent years of the century." - Publishers Weekly
"The Kennedy train is a weak link here between plot segments that are stylistically disjointed and lack any deeper thematic connection." - Kirkus Reviews
"Journalist Rowell turns to fiction in this closely observed novel that recalls a more innocent time..." - Booklist
This information about The Train of 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.
David Rowell is an editor at the Washington Post Magazine. He has taught literary journalism in the MFA department at American University. An alumnus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, he lives in Silver Spring, Maryland, with his wife and their two sons. The Train of Small Mercies is his first novel.
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