Two of My Favorites of the Year (So Far)
One book. One Movie. Both released last week and that I predict will be some of the best of the year.
I feel confident that two releases from last week (one book and one film) will end up on my year-end lists, even though it’s only the beginning of May.
And they are both set in the 1970s!
Small Mercies by Dennis Lehane and Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, written and directed by Kelly Fremon Craig, adapted from the novel by Judy Blume.
Small Mercies
Dennis Lehane is on my Mount Rushmore of crime writers. If he writes it, I’m reading it. Not just that, I’m dropping everything to start reading it right away, which is actually what I did when this novel came out last Tuesday.
His last novel, Since We Fell, came out in 2017, and while he’s been busy with TV work (he was a writer on Mr. Mercedes, The Outsider, and Black Bird), I’ve been anxiously awaiting his next novel, and it didn’t disappoint. I also think it makes an excellent introduction to his writing.
The blurb for Small Mercies describes it as “an all-consuming tale of revenge, family love, festering hate, and insidious power, set against one of the most tumultuous episodes in Boston’s history.”
The novel is set during a heatwave in the summer of 1974, where a judge set in motion the desegregation of Boston schools, and Mary Pat Fennesy’s 17-year-old daughter Jules, just went missing. The same night Jules Fennesy was last seen, a young black man was found dead. Mary Pat is desperately doing whatever she can to find her daughter, and in the process discovers that there may be a link between her daughter’s disappearance and the death of the young black man, as well as the local Irish mob.
Mary Pat is one of my new favorite crime protagonists. She is a true underdog, growing up poor in the Southie projects, she appears to be no match for the powerful people who want her to stop asking questions, but she is driven with the fierce determination of a parent, and it makes every scene thrilling, because I truly could not predict how far she would go.
She is constantly dealing with dangerous men who underestimate her because she is a woman from the neighborhood they have known their whole lives, not understanding just how dangerous she has become. The novel is devastatingly sad, poignant, and thrilling.
There are a few things that stood out to me while I was reading:
I don’t think anyone does Boston better than Dennis Lehane
His novels are dripping with a sense of authenticity of the people, place, and time, unlike almost anything else I’ve read. Whether it’s the details about the neighborhood dynamics or different personalities of its inhabitants, it feels real and alive and urgent in a way that few other books seem to be.
This is a powerful and painful portrait of racism in 1970s Boston
I know I shouldn’t be surprised by how close we are to racism like this, but I was. I shamefully didn’t realize that any schools were still segregated in the 1970s. And to think that an effort to desegregate schools in 1974 would have caused such an uproar is baffling to me.
Lehane does not pull any punches with his portrayal of racism in this book. It’s hard to read in places. I was certainly uncomfortable with how often, and how hatefully, white people in this book deployed the n-word. But it’s a needed reminder of how far we haven’t come. We are still dealing with this, and while we might be tempted to think that the racism in the book is cartoonish, or over the top, any casual check-in of current events in America will let us know that we still have so much work to do.
My first instinct as I was reading was to question whether Lehane was the right person to tell a story with racism at the core of almost all of the events. But as I thought about it more I realized that this story is about several of our main (white) characters coming to terms with their own racism, and how it has poisoned them and their families.
Mary Pat especially is not spared from this uncomfortable self-reflection. She isn’t portrayed as more progressive than her peers, the lone “good” white person, swimming in a sea of hate. No, racism is the sea she is swimming in, and she is not immune to its effects, its influences, and some of what she has to grapple with is how she has passed on this legacy to her daughter.
In some ways, the novel is about a white person coming face to face with the consequences of their own hatred, and maybe for the first time seeing just how ugly it is.
Ben Affleck better already have the rights for this novel locked up
Seriously. If they have not already optioned this to Affleck for his next directorial project, then I will be furious. This would be the third Lehane novel that Affleck has adapted, and he is the man to do it.
Read this book.
Are You There God, It’s Me, Margaret
I did not read the Judy Blume book growing up. I actually hadn’t even seen a trailer for the movie until last night, but that was after I had decided to see it based on the recommendation of a friend (as well as the general buzz about the film).
My wife and I were both sobbing by the time the credits rolled, and I was blown away by the seemingly straight forward approach to the material leading to such a powerful payoff.
This was written for the screen and directed by Kelly Fremon Craig, who also wrote and directed The Edge of Seventeen (another great coming of age film), and between these two films, I feel like Craig should be on the same list as Greta Gerwig as one of the most exciting new filmmakers working today.
Margaret Simon is in the sixth grade, and her family moves from New York to the New Jersey suburbs, while she navigates her religious identity (her father is Jewish, her mother was raised Christian, and they have raised her to be “nothing”), friends at a new school, and her budding womanhood.
The film perfectly captures this age, and the angst and fear and worry of trying to figure out who you authentically are, which is constantly crashing into the need for acceptance and for friendship. It also beautifully navigates the stories of Margaret’s mother (played brilliantly by Rachel McAdams) and her Grandmother (played brilliantly by Kathy Bates), and how each of them are in their own ways struggling with their own identities as instigated by this move.
Oh, and also the father is played by a Safdie Brother!
The casting is the first thing that stood out to me. The three generations of women are transcendent in these roles, with special emphasis on Abby Ryder Fortson as Margaret, but also Rachel McAdams who does not dim her charisma or charm for the role, but manages to perfectly complement the larger story, while still carving out her own space.
Because of religious trauma, I especially connected with her search for God, and could painfully recognize the adults in her life pushing her in different directions, all while she was earnestly trying to search for and create her own meaning with some form of divinity.
The scenes with her friends or those about puberty were often laugh-out-loud funny, or so painfully embarrassing (and sometimes both at the same time) that I felt transported to a younger version of myself. I felt myself experiencing the film through the lens of both Margaret (remembering the awkwardness of the sixth grade) and then also her mother (thinking about my son who is growing up much too fast), and both points of view emotionally destroyed me.
In the good way. I think.
My wife said on the ride home that she wished that she had this movie when she was growing up, and I’m so glad that we get to have it now.
Go see this movie.