Echoes Of Orwell In 'The Office Of Mercy'
And although the fast-paced plot makes The Office of Mercy exciting to read, the highlight of the novel is Natasha herself. Protagonists in dystopian fiction are too often retreads of the "lone voice crying out in the wilderness" archetype: flawless, brave and morally unimpeachable. But with Natasha, Djanikian has crafted a hero who is memorable precisely because of her imperfections — there's an initial gullibility and hypersentimentality to her, and it's fascinating, and at times heartbreaking, to witness her incremental growth as she begins to question everything she's been taught.
It takes a blend of intelligence and compassion to pull off that kind of convincing character arc, but it also takes great authorial skill — nobody's going to stick around to the end if the writing isn't good enough. Luckily, Djanikian proves to be expert at both narrative pacing — The Office of Mercy is an indisputable page turner with a surprising ending — and crafting prose. Describing mourners at a funeral for victims of a "sweeping," she writes, "They imagined the souls lingering just above the sand, in the exact place of the body's death, waiting, however the dead may wait, for God to call them home."
The stunning, willfully oblivious cruelty of America-Five is chilling because of its plausibility — you don't have to look past our own history for examples of mass slaughter, eugenics and euphemized government propaganda. It's hard to miss the echoes of Orwell in Djanikian's dark vision of both the past and the future — and an all too familiar-sounding country without conscience, hope and mercy.
Read an excerpt of The Office of Mercy