If men are from Mars and women are from Venus, as the American author John Gray once wrote, then children hail from a different universe entirely, or so the magnetic wisdom of The Mercy Step suggests. A girl called Mercy, born to Jamaican parents in Bradford in 1962, whisks us through her tumultuous memories as a newborn baby, toddler and then through childhood up to the age of 11, offering a fascinating insight into the surreal yet sharp minds of children. It is a daring and bold debut from Marcia Hutchinson, a former lawyer and Labour councillor who turned to fiction in her sixties.
In the story, a mother’s mouth is perceived as a portal back to the blissful “squid-ink black” of the womb and must be climbed into with the urgency of a worker going down a manhole. A barred cot is a punishing “baby-jail”, while time is counted out in treacle or Weetabix. The child’s world contains much more magic than the “frownsy” world of adults. Mercy, insightful beyond her years, circles round a convincing argument that the mother-daughter umbilical cord is not cut at birth – it “vibrates” with “little messages”, but like “an electric wire that has lost some of its plastic coating”, sometimes “the signal doesn’t always get through”.
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In the shadow of spousal violence, as her mother is beaten “like her bones are made of spaghetti”, Mercy recounts how she has “spent her whole life trying to save Mummy. It didn’t work. So now she has to save herself.” The Mercy Step is a sobering read, albeit sugared with childlike sweetness and humour (sometimes, these children laugh so hard they wet their pants).
In a satisfying final turn, Mercy, like the novel’s author, develops a love for reading. (Hutchinson was the first pupil from her comprehensive school to go to Oxford.) Here, literature is the balm to fix a broken heart.
The Mercy Step by Marcia Hutchinson is published by Casava Republic Press (£16.99). Order a copy from The Observer Shop for £15.29. Delivery charges may apply
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