The Mercy Step by Marcia Hutchinson audiobook review – a Caribbean child’s-eye view of 60s Bradford

The author captures the comedy and cruelty in this tenderly written coming-of-age tale

This Women’s prize-nominated novel from Marcia Hutchinson is told from the perspective of Mercy Hanson, a girl born in Bradford in 1962 to a mother she adores and a father she fears. We follow Mercy, their spirited fifth child, from birth through her toddler years to primary education. There she discovers books for the first time, in which she finds delicious escape.

In her first week at school, she flees the classroom and runs all the way home after a teacher inadvertently kicks her in the forehead and then denies it. This prompts her God-fearing mother to march to school and into the classroom where she threatens the teacher with hellfire if she touches her daughter again. But Mercy’s mother is unable to protect herself or her children from her short-tempered husband who is “very tall, a proper giant” and smokes Capstan Full Strength cigarettes. Mercy’s father slaps her in her crib when she cries, and viciously beats her mother.