Mercy House
Adam Cesare
Hydra – an imprint of Random House
June 9, 2015
Reviewed by Tim Potter
“This was a house of death, a nice one with decent food, but nobody came to Mercy House to get better.”
In his fourth full length novel, Adam Cesare marks some serious leaps in his already prodigious storytelling powers. Cesare’s earlier work tended to stick to a specific subgenre of horror, and have leaned to the lighter side of the genre. Mercy House eschews these ideas for the most part in telling a gritty, nasty, splatter-filled story that doesn’t try to wedge itself into any specific niche. The other big change for the author is that instead of letting the plot drive the narrative, he tells this tale through a great cast of characters.
Mercy House is a home for the aging, a hospice really, and the first characters introduced are bringing their mother, or mother-in-law, to live there. They are a realistic, modern couple facing a situation that has become unfortunately common. The first horrors, which arise quickly, have nothing to do with violence, but the horror of hatred and the terror of living past ones functional years. The white mother-in-law and the black daughter-in-law have a fascinating, nuanced relationship where these horrors play out. It’s a strong dynamic that develops nicely in the first few pages.
Mercy House is an interesting and unique venue for a horror story, but one that works very well, in large part due to reality. The Mercy House employees are also well rendered and have the feel of people you’ve met in real places like this. There’s a great dynamic at play between two nurses: the lazy nurse the patients love and the hard working nurse the patients think is cold and rude. Gail, the Headmistress, does little to interfere, as she’s little more than a saleswoman to new patients, a character that’s all too real.
The character highlights are two of the patients, Beatrice (or Queen Bea), who is the most boisterous patient, and Arnold Piper, a war vet living out his last days as best he can. From the first appearance of Piper, readers will fall in love with the character. Piper, feeling a tingle in his nether-regions, describes the sensation as “…the kind of tingle reserved for those Jazzercise infomercials they stopped playing two decades ago.” There may be less humor than in some of Cesare’s past work, but there is some and it’s comedy gold.
The story plays out as a no-holds-barred extreme horror novel. The use of elderly characters in a rest home make for some truly original gore and terror-inducing situations. Things are unsettling to begin with, but go crazy when “the Healing” happens. Patients begin to get healthier, if far from perfect, and they use their newfound physical abilities to take out anger on the workers who many feel have treated them with disdain for so long. By the end of the novel, it’s just about full-fledged elderly MMA.
The structure of the story is fantastic. Cesare sets up the characters and their situations without tiring exposition, and then gently eases them into the horror. Once they get there, they are shoved head first into the splatter. Mercy House is a great book and continues to show that Adam Cesare is a writer on the rise, constantly growing and headed for the best-seller lists.
- Midian Unmade – Book Review - September 30, 2015
- Wolf Land – Book Review - September 16, 2015
- Convalescence – Book Review - September 7, 2015
- Rage Master – Book Review - September 3, 2015
- The Art of Horrible People – Book Review - August 28, 2015
- Greasepaint – Book Review - August 26, 2015
- Bonesy – Book Review - August 17, 2015
- Dark Screams: Volume Four – Book Review - August 13, 2015
- Trust No One – Book Review - August 10, 2015
- The Monstruous – Book Review - August 3, 2015
