cover image Book of Mercy

Book of Mercy

Kathleen Cambor. Farrar Straus Giroux, $22 (261pp) ISBN 978-0-374-11550-0

The intriguing subject of a modern man's fascination with alchemy and Cambor's haiku-sharp prose distinguish her impressive first novel. This is a book about storytelling and how we use it: ""Forget truth, what matters is the way it felt, the tale you tell about it,'' one of the characters says. The narrative alternates between the third-person perspective of institutionalized Edmund Mueller, 83, as he looks back on a life defined by loss, and the first-person viewpoint of Edmund's 42-year-old daughter, Anne, a psychiatrist and single mother. Edmund's tale revolves around his melodramatic, irresponsible and increasingly mentally ill wife, who deserted him while Anne and her brother were small children. Shortly thereafter, Edmund, a Pittsburgh fireman, displaced his fascination with the transformative powers of fire to the study of alchemy. Cambor offers a serious treatment of the medieval art as Edmund learns of alchemy's laws and of its claim of the transmutability of any object or element (including of the dead into the living). Meanwhile, Anne relates her own life story: ""Alchemy, God, psychiatry. Extreme attempts to fill the void,'' she muses. Yet loss keeps intruding: her brother Paul runs away to enter a seminary; her lover decamps, though she is pregnant. Anne's discovery, near the end, of the secret behind her father's obsession with alchemy adds a deeper note of poignancy. Cambor is a sensitive and imaginative writer. Readers will be seduced by her story of love, loss and redemption, and by the power of her prose. (June)