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Mercy Lily

ebook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available

I take the bees outside, unscrew the lid of the bee jar, and listen to their angry buzzing.

"I hate you," I whisper.

Lily's mother has slowly been losing herself to multiple sclerosis. After traditional treatment fails, she uses bee sting therapy, administered by Lily, to alleviate her pain. Lily is trained as a veterinary assistant, so she can easily handle the treatments. What she can't handle is what happens when the bee sting therapy fails and it becomes clear that her mom wants to die.

One beautiful spring day, Lily's mother asks her for the most impossible thing of all—mercy. While navigating first love, friendship, and other normal worries faced by high school sophomores, Lily also has to choose: help her mom go, or cling to her fading life for all it's worth.

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    • Kirkus

      September 1, 2011

      Oregon high-school sophomore Lily has been her widowed mother's caregiver for four years, injecting her with bee venom to counter the debilitating effects of multiple sclerosis. When the venom stops working, Mom asks Lily to help her die.

      Mom hasn't consulted a doctor since her MS specialist, father of Lily's love interest, refused to authorize bee-venom therapy (readers aren't told that clinical studies support his position). A veterinarian, she adheres to a strict "natural" healing regimen, even refusing hospital palliative care (perplexingly, the family diet is rich in processed foods). It's unclear why Mom, financially secure, largely ambulatory and surrounded by loving caregivers, arbitrarily rules out dialysis and palliative care that could ease her pain and allow her more time with Lily. Mom's decision to die and Lily's tritely resolved feelings about it are conveyed simplistically, without reference to a larger social context or acknowledgment that many who live with disabilities find "right to die" laws troubling. This debut, hobbled by its high-concept–but-unlikely premise, is further undermined by errors and inconsistencies, especially in its portrayal of the natural world. Though thematically central, nature itself receives slapdash treatment, and Oregon's vastly different climate zones are erroneously conflated.

      Flimsy and forgettable. (Fiction. 12 & up)

      (COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

    • Kirkus

      September 1, 2011

      Oregon high-school sophomore Lily has been her widowed mother's caregiver for four years, injecting her with bee venom to counter the debilitating effects of multiple sclerosis. When the venom stops working, Mom asks Lily to help her die.

      Mom hasn't consulted a doctor since her MS specialist, father of Lily's love interest, refused to authorize bee-venom therapy (readers aren't told that clinical studies support his position). A veterinarian, she adheres to a strict "natural" healing regimen, even refusing hospital palliative care (perplexingly, the family diet is rich in processed foods). It's unclear why Mom, financially secure, largely ambulatory and surrounded by loving caregivers, arbitrarily rules out dialysis and palliative care that could ease her pain and allow her more time with Lily. Mom's decision to die and Lily's tritely resolved feelings about it are conveyed simplistically, without reference to a larger social context or acknowledgment that many who live with disabilities find "right to die" laws troubling. This debut, hobbled by its high-concept-but-unlikely premise, is further undermined by errors and inconsistencies, especially in its portrayal of the natural world. Though thematically central, nature itself receives slapdash treatment, and Oregon's vastly different climate zones are erroneously conflated.

      Flimsy and forgettable. (Fiction. 12 & up)

      (COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

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  • English

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