Mercury

Summary (from the publisher): Donald believes he knows all there is to know about seeing. An optometrist in suburban Boston, he is sure that he and his wife, Viv, who runs the local stables, are both devoted to their two children and to each other. Then Mercury—a gorgeous young thoroughbred with a murky past—arrives at Windy Hill and everything changes.

Mercury’s owner, Hilary, is a newcomer to town who has enrolled her daughter in riding lessons. When she brings Mercury to board at Windy Hill, everyone is struck by his beauty and prowess, particularly Viv. As she rides him, Viv begins to dream of competing again, embracing the ambitions that she had harbored, and relinquished, as a young woman. Her daydreams soon morph into consuming desire, and her infatuation with the thoroughbred escalates to obsession.

Donald may have 20/20 vision but he is slow to notice how profoundly Viv has changed and how these changes threaten their quiet, secure world. By the time he does, it is too late to stop the catastrophic collision of Viv’s ambitions and his own myopia.

At once a tense psychological drama and a taut emotional thriller exploring love, obsession, and the deceits that pull a family apart, Mercury is a riveting tour de force that showcases this “searingly intelligent writer at the height of her powers” (Jennifer Egan).  

 

Review: I received an advance readers' edition of this novel from HarperCollins.

 

Donald is an optometrist in Boston. Although still grieving his late father, he's content with life with his wife Viv and two young children.  There's also some charming yet extraneous details such as Donald originally being from Scotland and Donald's pet parrot Nabokov constantly spouting poetry in the background of conversations. Yet despite his seemingly happy life, Donald fails to notice that Viv has become obsessed with a horse - Mercury - at the stables where she works and harbors ambitions of riding him to glory. Slowly and subtly, Donald and Viv drift further apart and hide things from one another, ultimately threatening their life together.

 

Throughout the novel, Donald serves as a first person narrator, with the frame story that the novel is Donald's written account of what has transpired between him and Viv. Donald speaks directly to his reader, making reference to writing his own account of events with comments such as "you will not see much evidence of it in this narrative" (6). Donald argues that he wrote his own personal account because he "wanted to understand what had happened: how Viv had changed, how I had changed, how we had failed each other not in sickness or in health but in the hard task of leading daily lives" (312). Donald does include a section that is from Viv's perspective, but interestingly, its still through Donald's perspective, as he claims he wrote Viv's account as he remembers her telling him.

 

Interestingly, it is differences in individual perspectives, or vision, that profoundly shape this novel and make up the predominant theme of the book. Not only is Donald an optometrist, seen inspecting the vision of patients and focusing on sight, but his best friend Jack is blind. Furthermore, over the course of the novel, Donald must increasingly accept that his version of events isn't the only version or the only interpretation of what actually occurred; "I realized my vision was almost as limited as Jack's. There is listening and listening; there is also seeing and seeing. I had missed, or misunderstood, almost everything. Which surely means that, despite everything Viv told me, I am still missing a good deal" (211).

 

The build up of the narrative felt overly melodramatic and I couldn't help but find Donald's narrative whiny in tone. I was frustrated that despite claiming to be so in love, Donald and Viv never make any attempt to confront one another about how they have drifted apart or even to discuss their differences of opinions. In short, by the conclusion this novel seemed like a long winded build up to a relatively minor incident that was merely a more dramatic way of showcasing a marriage in turmoil. Furthermore, Donald as the narrator came across as shallow and self absorbed; he pays scant attention to his wife until it's too late other than to whine about her interest in riding and seems unapologetic about his involvement in the incident, as well as his attraction to one of his patients. For that matter, although Viv is supposedly supremely motivated by obsession over a horse, the horse factors into the story very little and it was difficult for me to accept that she felt so strongly over Mercury that she abandoned honesty to her husband, care of her children, and her ideals to pursue her dream of riding him.  In sum, despite an interesting concept and unusual character details, I was prevented from truly enjoying this novel as I found the characters shallow and self absorbed and found the storyline lacking.

 

Stars: 3