The fact that “children, actual children, were dying every day - of abuse, neglect, wholly avoidable causes” - does not distress them particularly. Outside the clinic are protesters who don’t see, or refuse to acknowledge, the fires on those other floors. Their lives, Claudia explains, are like a burning building with a fire on every floor. Too often the women and, yes, girls who arrive at Mercy Street are in crisis - terrified, poor, emotionally or physically abused, sometimes H.I.V. The Mercy Street clinic, by contrast, is woman-shaped, offering, in addition to abortion, many other necessary services: information about “decent jobs, any sort of health insurance … child care, affordable housing, antibiotics, antidepressants.” If the clinic’s clients were what Claudia calls functioning adults - that is, “healthy, employed, financially stable … clearheaded, unambivalent” - it would be one thing, but most aren’t. Despite the fact that only women get pregnant, the laws governing abortion are often not “woman-shaped.” As Gloria Steinem reminded us back in the ’70s, if men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament, but they can’t and it isn’t. Like most shoes designed for women, they were not foot-shaped.”Īnd therein lies the seriousness behind the book’s wit. She wore them every day for two years, and still they gave her blisters. All he really has going for him is a vasectomy, but “their careless sex was luxurious, like driving a car with heated seats or onboard navigation, some extravagant amenity she’d once considered unnecessary and now couldn’t live without.” Briefly married when she was younger, Claudia found that “married life was like walking around in shoes that almost fit. At 45, having given up on romance, she’s now dating Stuart, a divorced man with whom she has little in common. Marrying such a woman, he tells us seriously, “would be like investing in a generator, an essential power source.” It’s even more fun being inside the head of Claudia Birch, the book’s weary protagonist, who works as a counselor at the Boston women’s clinic that gives the novel its title. Take the following observation from Victor Prine, whose ideal woman would work as a midwife, grow her own vegetables, bake bread and make their children’s clothes. Why? Because, far from being depressing, the book is wonderfully entertaining, boasting a large, varied cast of vividly drawn characters whose company readers will find deeply rewarding, in no small part because lurking in their shadows is the devastatingly wry humor of their creator.
I’m not sure Jennifer Haigh’s extraordinary new novel, “Mercy Street,” which takes on that most polarizing of topics - abortion - will cheer them up exactly, but it would be a terrible mistake to give it a miss because of its hot-button topic.
#PBS MISERY STREET TV#
Readers, like TV viewers and moviegoers, could probably use a little cheering up as well.
We’re emerging (sort of), much the worse for wear, from a brutal pandemic and six years of nonstop political and cultural polarization that shows no sign of letting up.
Now everyone is looking for the next “Ted Lasso.” I guess that makes sense.
“Mare of Easttown” was gritty realism’s last gasp. According to a film and TV producer I spoke to recently, darkness has been shown the door in Hollywood.
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