The final story Angel of Mercy tells the tales of two nurses, one born forty years earlier than the other. What connects them is that they worked in the same neuropsychiatric ward, though the one was long dead before the younger started employment in 1998. The title refers to how the older nurse saw herself as she administered mercy to the terminallly ill patients. Joyce paints the physical and mental degradation of a slow death. This will be disturbing reading for anyone with an elderly relative. Doctors are able to keep their distance, But the nurse is there alongside the patients for months. “Always I had their best interests at heart not like the doctors keeping them alive like vegetable for the $,” she writes in her secret diary, which was only discovered after her suicide. Through her whole life her ‘mission’ remained undetected.

The younger nurse knows next to nothing of the “Angel of Death”. But she becomes affected by the atmosphere of the ward the other nurses jokingly call “The City of the Damned”. She starts out as a pretty peroxide blonde, but over the course of ten years she gives up the idea of boyfriends and marriage. “Now she knew too much, there could be no more romance of the body. All that was behind her, disdained.” And so, this entirely different person goes down the same path to become deliver her own sort of mercy.

The story is uncompromising – the issues of euthanasia it raises, the way in which modern medicine prolongs death to absurd lengths.

From an article on the mercy-killing nurse Cullen:

we might also note that a nurse who ends terminal patients’ lives because of a belief that the patients are experiencing unnecessary pain may differ in some respects from a “serial killer” who simply stalks and kills healthy individuals. Without condoning illegal or unethical conduct, and recognizing that no health care worker has the right to make life-ending decisions based solely on her own sense of morality, we hope that the press will in such cases bring to light all potentially relevant factors.

The bio mentions she was picked for an Oprah book and reached #1 on the New York Times bestseller list, ‘the first time any of her books reached the spot, though most have been critically acclaimed.’

I have some editions of JCO’s early works. By the North Gate and With Shuddering Fall. The blurbs are:

JCO is a fine writer … powerful examples of what the short story can be in the hands of a good writer … she uncovers the universal core within a unique happening … superb fiction by a national book award winner …

rich poetic hard and tender … A masterpiece … a rich and burgeoning talent …

Compare with the blurbs in 2006: “JCO is a genius.” “One of the female front runners for the title of Great American Novelist” “JCO can sweep the reader away” and the subtitle Tales of Mystery and Suspense. The word ‘genius’ has come to mean ‘witty, clever, and accessible to all’.

In fact there were perceptive newspapers reviews of Female of the Species. But they are not chosen to be blurbs. And the promotional website finds it preferable to menion Oprah (Oprah Winfrey, as every reader will know) and the bestseller list.