Christy Ann Conlin

This book was ok. It took a long time to get into...the story about a cult in Nova Scotia was too vague, and remained so. The magical aspects of the Offing Society stretched believability too far for me. Could a drugged, thirteen-year-old girl really overpower two men? Who exactly was Dianne and how did she become so important to Stella? Was Stella's mother murdered? There are hints that she was, but they go nowhere.

That said, the writing is beautiful and the characters and plot, despite flaws, held my interest to the end. And I liked the ending!… (mere)

The Speed of Mercy by Christy Ann Conlin is a so-so atmospheric Gothic mystery.

Malmuria (Mal) Grant-Patel is a podcaster who travels to Mercy Lake, located in rural Nova Scotia. This is the area where her mother grew up and left for good years ago, but there is a mystery surrounding the lodge that burn down in the 1980's. Mel thinks if she investigates the lodge and reports her findings it will give her podcast a boost and her life a purpose, but once she begins to get anonymous threats she knows she is not prepared to really investigate anything and might be in danger.

Stella Sprague, 54, lives at the Jericho County Care Centre where she has been for most of her adult life after a traumatic brain injury and another traumatic event. She is a friend with Dianne, an 84 year-old resident at the home, who helps her negotiate her schedule and life in the home. Stella struggles with uncertain memories and secrets hide just under the surface of her memories. Stella tells her life story which is divided up into before, during and after the horrible accident and the horrific affliction, or as she calls the incidents, HA HA.

The writing shows a lot of promise and can be both poetic, thoughtful, and descriptive. The narrative moves back and forth in time and between characters covering Mel's present day investigation and Stella's memories, both in the 1980's, and in the present. Sometimes the technique of telling a story through alternating characters in alternating timelines works and sometimes it doesn't. In this case it doesn't and for much of the beginning of the very slow paced novel the plot didn't grab my attention and I forced myself to keep reading. No matter how lyrical the writing is, a novel still needs a strong plot and good pacing to hold a reader's interest. It also took quite awhile for the characters to become fully realized. In the end this is a novel that excels in using language and descriptions but falls short on plot and character development.
Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of the House of Anansi Press.
http://www.shetreadssoftly.com/2021/08/the-speed-of-mercy.html
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4150480695… (mere)

In The Speed of Mercy, a middle-aged woman gradually recalls the harrowing events that left her mute and consigned to institutional care for most of her adult life. Stella Sprague, fifty-four, draws comfort and a sense of security from her daily routine at the Jericho County Care Centre, located in Nova Scotia’s picturesque Annapolis Valley region, and from her friendship with Dianne, another elderly resident. But her placid, cloistered and somewhat meaningless way of life is threatened when a young journalist named Malmuria Grant-Patel arrives asking questions about shocking practices and a secret society that originated generations ago and still persists, and who wants desperately to talk with Stella. In 1980, on the cusp of adolescence, Stella’s mother was killed and Stella herself gravely injured in a car crash. Reeling from the loss, Stella’s father William retreats with his daughter to the family home in Nova Scotia, the house left vacant after the death of his mother. Here Stella meets William’s childhood friend, successful businessman Frank Seabury, and develops a close bond with Frank’s garrulous, wise-beyond-her-years daughter Cynthia and Frank’s elderly mother, known as Granny Scotia. Since the accident, Stella’s relationship with her father has been strained, and the two hardly communicate. William, who in Stella’s opinion drinks too much, has taken a teaching position at the local college, and, immersing himself in preparations for the fall term, cheerfully allows Stella to spend as much time as she wants with Cynthia. Over the course of several summer months, Stella observes the adults around her, absorbing tales of the past and the regional folklore, but also gradually becoming aware of a disturbing undercurrent of menace that pervades the Seabury home and the entire community and that eventually becomes all too real when the girls find themselves in harm’s way. Christy Ann Conlin’s suspenseful narrative is split chronologically: a contemporary thread set in the recent aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic, with Malmuria pursuing the truth about what happened at Mercy Lake forty years earlier, and the story of Stella’s fateful summer of 1980. Conlin expertly ramps up the tension as the shadowy veil of amnesia slips away and Stella’s memories of those events at the lake creep into the light of day. Ultimately this is a story of stolen innocence, the trauma of violation and betrayal of trust. Conlin has written a narrative reminiscent of Flannery O’Connor, brimming with human eccentricity and hints of the darkness residing in people’s hearts. The story moves slowly and occasionally meanders—much like Stella’s mind—and it’s possible the book could have benefitted from some judicious pruning and tightening. But the story Conlin tells, of a woman who regains both her voice and the truth after years of silence and forgetting, is powerful and moving.… (mere)

Christy Ann Conlin is a Canadian author I had not yet read, so I was interested in reading her new book. Unfortunately, I was disappointed. It is an odd book which I think needs revision.

The book alternates between two timelines: 2021 and 1980. In post-pandemic 2021, Malmuria Grant-Patel (Mal), a podcaster, travels to rural Nova Scotia, to an area two people disparagingly describe as the “Georgia of the north.” Her intention is not to visit her mother’s birthplace but to uncover what happened at Mercy Lake years earlier: she is told “there was a link between a place called Mercy Lake in Nova Scotia and a group in New York that hid under a cloak of business, billions and blackmail – money and power providing an impenetrable shield for traditions, beliefs and rituals going back hundreds of years. A company called Cineris International. An old family named Jessome, in New York. . . . The woman was terrified. What they did to her went way back. There were others, lost in time.” Mal tries to talk to Stella Sprague, the sole living survivor of a fire that burned down the Mercy Lake Lodge where this secret group used to meet.

Stella is now 54 years of age and living in a care home. She suffers from memory loss and has been mute since a traumatic event 40 years earlier, an event she doesn’t remember but identifies as HA, the Horrific Affliction. She reminisces back to 1980 when she and her father moved to Nova Scotia after her mother’s death. Stella becomes friends with Cynthia, the daughter of her father’s best friend, Franklin Seabury, a wealthy businessman. Stella learns things about her father’s family that she had not known, but she is also uneasy around Cynthia and her father. It is obvious that the Horrific Affliction occurred soon after Stella’s arrival in Nova Scotia, but will she be able to remember what happened?

Events often require the reader to suspend disbelief. For example, Mal learns about a cult at Mercy Lake because she casually uses the word mercy in an interview with a woman from Nova Scotia who “then dropped her story out of the blue”? Two days after that conversation, Mal receives a threatening phone call warning her not to investigate when no one knows her intentions? Mal has no difficulty finding Stella, but those who might feel threatened by Stella haven’t found her in 40 years? Every woman Mal and Stella encounter is creative? Why would one survivor with incriminating evidence not go to authorities but leave it with Stella whose memory is untrustworthy: “we kept the memories for you, until you could hold them again”?

And then there are the contradictions. Stella turns over a postcard forty times, hoping it will jog her memory, that it “might break the spell, what she couldn’t remember” and then five sentences later we are told “Stella didn’t want to remember.” We are told “Mal was not the sort who scared easily” but she seems frightened most of the time. Mal “wanted to go home” but six sentences later, “Mal was not going home now.” A character says, “”What you need to focus on is your own safety, Mal. Right now we have to find Stella and Dianne, especially if some crazy person is following women around.’” So what is Mal supposed to do? A character is told, “’your father owes my dad money. And now your grandfather’s debt is your father’s debt’” and she asks, “”What? What do you mean they had to pay them back? With what?’” So often I was left shaking my head.

Vagueness is also an issue. Mal discovers very little about Sodality. When it is mentioned – described as a fellowship or a “weird men’s group” or a cult – very little real information is given. That’s the same problem with the Offing Society. And then there are unexplained events. A woman drives “without the seat belt, surprised it didn’t work, that it was jammed, but not worrying about it.” Is that supposed to suggest something about what happens? Why does young Cynthia behave as she does, keeping secrets from Stella and keeping secrets for her? What are we to make of Cynthia’s comment that “’my mother can sort of see the future, [my father] says. That’s why he needs her to spend time with him.’”

The novel does touch on some important subjects. For instance, if offers several examples of how women, especially older women, are dismissed. The repeated message is that old women should not be underestimated. The treatment of the people with mental health issues is examined; often those suffering are not seen as victims but blamed for their situations.

The book has potential, but as I said at the beginning, it needs revision. When I received the digital galley I was informed that the book would be released on March 23. Now I understand that it won’t be released until August 3. I’m hoping that date change means that revision will be done.

Note: I received an eARC from the publisher via NetGalley.

Please check out my reader's blog (https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/) and follow me on Twitter (@DCYakabuski).… (mere)