OCTOBER 2016 - AudioFile
Margot Livesey’s latest work explores blindness in both its literal and figurative manifestations. Narrator Derek Perkins performs wonderfully as Donald, a Scotsman who is transplanted to Boston. Donald is an ophthalmologist with perfect vision—except where his wife, Viv, is concerned. Donald fails to notice Viv’s obsession with Mercury, a thoroughbred stallion she believes is her chance to make a name for herself. Narrator Nicol Zanzarella delivers Viv’s sections in an agitated, sincere tone that is perfect for the high-strung middle-aged woman whose insights never touch on her own personal problems. Perkins and Zanzarella deliver convincing performances as a violent act brings devastation in this convoluted drama, which is less about a horse than about the erosion of trust due to secrets, lies, and willful blindness. Intense listening. S.J.H. © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine
Publishers Weekly
07/11/2016
Livesey’s latest (following The Flight of Gemma Hardy) is a fiercely intelligent exploration of the ways blindness—to ourselves, others, and the power of passion and grief—can divide and transform us. After his father dies of Parkinson’s, optometrist Donald Stevenson’s reserve deepens into what Viv, his wife of nine years, likens to the airless impenetrability of an astronaut’s suit. Viv’s teenage dreams of equestrian competition resurface when Mercury, an exceptionally promising thoroughbred, comes to board at the suburban Boston stable she helps run. Donald; Viv’s boss, Claudia; and Mercury’s owner, Hilary, assume that Viv accepts the obvious: Mercury is not hers to risk, compete on, or control. Facing their resistance to her growing obsession and increasingly distanced from Donald, Viv conceals the time and money she lavishes on the horse. When the stable is repeatedly broken into, she fears that telling Claudia or Hilary will lead to Mercury’s removal. Instead, she buys a gun. Seen primarily from Donald’s muffled, sometimes pedantic perspective, the novel unfolds patiently, through a chain of small and mostly well-intentioned deceptions that nevertheless yield catastrophe. Livesey’s skillful play with the title’s many meanings—trickster god of speed, diagnostic aid, minor planet, deadly poison—gives her narrative a rich imagery that interweaves seamlessly with its textured evocation of everyday life. (Sept.)
Jennifer Egan
MERCURY is a haunting, meticulous inquiry into the nature of blindness-its insidious power to corrupt marital trust, even between those with perfect vision. Margot Livesey is a searingly intelligent writer at the height of her powers.
Dennis Lehane
MERCURY is as luminous, unforgettable, and perfectly rendered as only Margot Livesey can accomplish. I only wished it were twice as long.
Ben Fountain
MERCURY demonstrates Tolstoy’s dictum: all unhappy families are unhappy in their own way. The Stevensons find themselves upended by a horse - a magnificent horse that sets off a chain of deceit and crime. This powerful novel reveals the fragility of life when tested by the shock of genuine passion.
Lily King
MERCURY explores that thrilling, terrifying moment when grief turns blind, when passion becomes obsession. As always, Livesey tells her tale masterfully, with intelligence, tenderness and a shrewd understanding of all our mercurial human impulses.
Claire Messud
The mid-life crisis takes many forms, some familiar, some wildly unexpected. Livesey, in her riveting novel MERCURY, portrays a couple in their season of crisis. Patiently, precisely, she unfolds the layers of their drama, at once quiet and extreme. She’ll make you wonder how well you know your spouse.
Carol Haggas
Livesey’s story of loyalty, deceit, ambition, and moral ambiguity is a read-in-one-sitting, sublimely nuanced psychological exploration of personal ethics and responsibility ideal for book-discussion groups.
Sally Bissell
Livesey has a penchant for creating a sense of foreboding in her novels.... A tangled morality tale not about a horse but about a marriage and friendships disintegrating under the steady drip of secrets and half-truths.
Mark Kamine
Margot Livesey should be better known.... [She] writes as well as anyone and is clearly steeped in the literary canon.... She’s a patient builder of complex characters who are often brought face to face with uncomfortable truths about themselves.
Katherine A. Powers
Step by step, Livesey brilliantly assembles a truly painful and frightening picture of delusion.... I cannot in good conscience reveal more of the plot. I came to this story in a state of innocence, and I feel that its terrific power depended in great part on the gradual unfolding of unlooked-for events.
Pick of the Week People
You’ll be glued to the page.
Lit Hub
The inimitable Margot Livesey has written an unforgettable story of a couple in the midst of their marriage’s dissolution. No one has a better understanding of human nature.
The New Yorker
Consuming.... Explores themes of honesty and understanding by showing the impact that obsessions—grief, rapacity—can have on a marriage.
Newsday
An enigmatic, unhappy marriage is at the center of Livesey’s ninth novel..... Secrets and lies lurk in the background.
New York Post
Gripping.
Shelf Awareness
Multi-layered domestic dramas are Margot Livesey’s specialty. In Mercury, she again probes contradictions in human relationships, this time orbiting the often perilous abyss of middle age and casting her gaze on matters of perception in both literal and figurative terms.
Dan DeLuca
Fast-paced, with the feel of life as lived….In Livesey, as in Chekhov, when a gun turns up in a domestic drama, it’s bound to go off.
Alexis Burling
A probing morality study that chips away at the age-old question: Would you turn in a loved one if you knew they did something reprehensible? Better yet: When, if ever, is it OK to lie?
Chloe Schama
Delving into the subtler miscommunications of even the most intertwined lives… [MERCURY] underlines the small efforts people make to carve out autonomy within a marriage.
Melinda Bargreen
This remarkable, powerful novel takes its title from a horse: a beautiful, dapple-gray thoroughbred that becomes the object of obsession and the pivotal point of author Margot Livesey’s richly complex story.
New York Times
Livesey knows her way around human desire and disappointment. Like the recent blockbusters GONES GIRL and FATES AND FURIES, MERCURY gives us a marriage from alternating perspectives. Unlike those books, there is no looming gimmick or twist. The parties involved agree on what has happened. The question is whether or not their love can survive it.
Helen T. Verongos
Thrilling.
Anne Kniggendorf
A page-turner.
Julia Glass
No one plumbs the depths of ordinary human folly and its consequences like the brilliantly perceptive Margot Livesey. Be prepared: MERCURY will take you on quite a ride.
Leah Hager Cohen
Livesey’s prose has a brusque sensuality. It reads lucid and forthright and lean.... Livesey roots tension not just in the bones but the very marrow of the book.
New York Post
Gripping.
The New Yorker
Consuming.... Explores themes of honesty and understanding by showing the impact that obsessions—grief, rapacity—can have on a marriage.
John Williams
Livesey knows her way around human desire and disappointment. Like the recent blockbusters Gone Girl and Fates and Furies, Mercury gives us a marriage from alternating perspectives. Unlike those books, there is no looming gimmick or twist. The parties involved agree on what has happened. The question is whether or not their love can survive it.
New Yorker
Consuming.... Explores themes of honesty and understanding by showing the impact that obsessions-grief, rapacity-can have on a marriage.
Library Journal
04/15/2016
Following The Flight of Gemma Hardy, a New York Times best seller in paperback that greatly boosted Livesey's sales record, this novel stars a beautiful thoroughbred named Mercury, newly boarded at the suburban Boston stable run by Viv.
OCTOBER 2016 - AudioFile
Margot Livesey’s latest work explores blindness in both its literal and figurative manifestations. Narrator Derek Perkins performs wonderfully as Donald, a Scotsman who is transplanted to Boston. Donald is an ophthalmologist with perfect vision—except where his wife, Viv, is concerned. Donald fails to notice Viv’s obsession with Mercury, a thoroughbred stallion she believes is her chance to make a name for herself. Narrator Nicol Zanzarella delivers Viv’s sections in an agitated, sincere tone that is perfect for the high-strung middle-aged woman whose insights never touch on her own personal problems. Perkins and Zanzarella deliver convincing performances as a violent act brings devastation in this convoluted drama, which is less about a horse than about the erosion of trust due to secrets, lies, and willful blindness. Intense listening. S.J.H. © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2016-05-17
Another probing study of the way character shapes our destinies from the author of The Flight of Gemma Hardy (2012), etc.It's perhaps a bit much to make Donald an optometrist, given that he confesses shortly after disclosing his occupation that he failed to see wife Viv's obsession with a horse named Mercury until it was much too late. But Livesey, a Scottish transplant whose brilliant novels are underknown in her adopted country, rings so many dazzling changes on the subjects of eyesight, hindsight, and blinkered sight that she may be forgiven the whiff of contrivance in her setup. Donald's personality is utterly credible: cautious, precise, Scottish-ly phlegmatic yet roiled by deep feelings of loss. They go back to boyhood, when his family's move from Edinburgh to Boston cost Donald his best friend, and have been elevated to devastating levels by the recent death of his father after a long siege of Parkinson's disease. The intensity of Donald's attachment to his father is palpable but never really explained; Livesey has a healthy respect for the mysteries of the human heart. Viv, who narrates the novel's middle section, is rendered with somewhat less nuance: her lifelong need to be the best, focused on riding in adolescence and only temporarily derailed to a career in mutual funds, re-emerges with a scary edge when Mercury arrives at the stable she now runs with her best friend, Claudia. It's hard to be entirely sympathetic when she tells Donald (accurately), "Since your dad died you've been MIA," as we see Viv driven into secrecy and lies by her hysterical need to make Mercury a champion and herself a star. But Donald also keeps secrets, one of which contributes to a ghastly act of misdirected violence that leads to a dance of regret, recrimination, and indecision bringing further losses for husband and wife. A sharply sketched supporting cast adds to the depth and cumulative power of this grimly great novel. Uncharacteristically dark, yet more evidence of Livesey's formidable gifts.
