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Mercury Falling
'Shows once more Edric’s unassuming yet remarkable talent for conjuring up the lives of his characters' The Sunday Times
The Fenlands, 1954
It is a tough winter; the temperatures have fallen too low too quickly and the floods are the worst anyone can remember.
Most people have lost everything but there are some who have found themselves eager for the chance at a new start. For Jimmy Devlin, it’s a little of both.
Forced from his home by an uncompromising bailiff, Jimmy has nothing to his name and the prospect of work digging urgently needed drains could be the opportunity he’s been waiting for. But Jimmy, it seems, has a knack for finding trouble. Before long, he’s caught up in the wrong business with the people from the fairground passing through town. But, on the run from the law, he has nowhere else to turn.
With his keen eye and trademark candour, Robert Edric takes his readers to the most desolate of places, to explore what a man is capable of doing when he has nothing left to lose.
- GenresFiction
326 pages, Hardcover
Published April 5, 2018
About the author
Robert Edric
37 books30 followersRobert Edric (b. 1956) is the pseudonym of Gary Edric Armitage, a British novelist born in Sheffield.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
August 8, 2021
Similar to waterland but much better, a great ending. Very moving throughout and sums up the changing of rural Britain post war. If you liked this I'd recommend either waterland by swift or Akensfield
August 16, 2018
What a marvellous piece of writing this is. A compelling, moving, well-crafted and beautifully-written novel about the decline and fall of Jimmy Devlin, a young man trying to survive in the bleak and unforgiving landscape of the Fens in 1954. For a year we follow him as he takes any work he can get, even if that means becoming involved with petty crooks and conmen and sinking deeper into trouble. He has no prospects, no hope for a better life. Even in the best of times, this harsh area of England is a difficult place to live, and these aren’t the best of times. A severe flood the year before has only complicated matters for all the inhabitants, and any idea of kindness or generosity has gone out the window. Edric’s characterisation is spot-on and Jimmy Devlin is quite unforgettable. An excellent novel and one I heartily recommend.
February 9, 2023
I was surprised to find this to be very moving, the ending in particular articulated how it feels for eras to slip away and the humanity that can be found in even the most desolate moments. That we are all losing, and finding, and losing, and realising, and forgetting.
June 25, 2026
This isn’t an easy read. A working class man in the Fens in the 50s tumbles further and further into chaos, taken advantage of by the criminals he falls in with, making poor decisions that push him further and further out of society until he is a wanted man.
Devlin isn’t a bad man but he can’t fit in. Not with the local underclass who rob the post-war government projects, not with the travellers at the fair that he shelters with and finds temporary comfort with, not with his aspiring upper working class sister and her husband desperate to have a nice home, all mod cons and a modicum of respectability. He can’t find stable work because that kind of work is disappearing through mechanisation.
The “old ways” that just about sustained people like Jimmy from hand to mouth are disappearing under government edicts, progress and the lure of the new welfare state. None of the men in this are pleasant, the women hardly much better, but they too are having to adapt, sell up their land to development or move away to Lowestoft (heaven help them). Edric doesn’t romanticise these people - they are cruel, devious and self-serving- but the pre-war world that they knew is going just as surely as the land they stand on is being destroyed by the sea that floods their lands in winter. There’s no place for Jimmy in this new world.
Jimmy is drawn to an isolated tin chapel where he meets Samuel, a shepherd. He’s a figure that operates as a kind of spirit of the land or perhaps an angelic presence. His role is to comfort and not judge Jimmy. He is gentle and unafraid despite Jimmy’s increasingly wild appearance and behaviour. He seems to turn up just when Jimmy hits his lowest ebbs. Like all the places that Jimmy visits and then later sees swept away, Samuel is soon to lose his tin chapel, leaving “a vast emptiness” with the people who once cared for the land, worshipped there, be born and die all forgotten “and who would never again return to the place and say it was their own”
Jimmy, the travellers, the farmers, the old ways of managing the land, even perhaps the spirit of the land, are the last ragged traces of a world that is dying and the appearance of the modern world with which they must either make a deal or else like Jimmy be forever an outsider.
Devlin isn’t a bad man but he can’t fit in. Not with the local underclass who rob the post-war government projects, not with the travellers at the fair that he shelters with and finds temporary comfort with, not with his aspiring upper working class sister and her husband desperate to have a nice home, all mod cons and a modicum of respectability. He can’t find stable work because that kind of work is disappearing through mechanisation.
The “old ways” that just about sustained people like Jimmy from hand to mouth are disappearing under government edicts, progress and the lure of the new welfare state. None of the men in this are pleasant, the women hardly much better, but they too are having to adapt, sell up their land to development or move away to Lowestoft (heaven help them). Edric doesn’t romanticise these people - they are cruel, devious and self-serving- but the pre-war world that they knew is going just as surely as the land they stand on is being destroyed by the sea that floods their lands in winter. There’s no place for Jimmy in this new world.
Jimmy is drawn to an isolated tin chapel where he meets Samuel, a shepherd. He’s a figure that operates as a kind of spirit of the land or perhaps an angelic presence. His role is to comfort and not judge Jimmy. He is gentle and unafraid despite Jimmy’s increasingly wild appearance and behaviour. He seems to turn up just when Jimmy hits his lowest ebbs. Like all the places that Jimmy visits and then later sees swept away, Samuel is soon to lose his tin chapel, leaving “a vast emptiness” with the people who once cared for the land, worshipped there, be born and die all forgotten “and who would never again return to the place and say it was their own”
Jimmy, the travellers, the farmers, the old ways of managing the land, even perhaps the spirit of the land, are the last ragged traces of a world that is dying and the appearance of the modern world with which they must either make a deal or else like Jimmy be forever an outsider.
June 28, 2019
Jimmy Devlin is a down on his luck drifter wasting his life in the Fens in the mid 50s. He chances on various people as the story progresses, each linked in some way. All clearly taking advantage to one degree or another. The question is whether Devlin can see this and break the cycle.
Beautifully written and observed, it is the dialogue that makes this story, interspersed with the constant reminder of deteriorating whether and a recent history of flooding.
None of the characters are likeable but Devlin has just enough charm for the reader to care. Superbly balanced and utterly believable.
Beautifully written and observed, it is the dialogue that makes this story, interspersed with the constant reminder of deteriorating whether and a recent history of flooding.
None of the characters are likeable but Devlin has just enough charm for the reader to care. Superbly balanced and utterly believable.
October 7, 2025
A year in the life of Jimmy Devlin, evicted from his home, he falls in with the wrong people. Life is hard in 1954 in The Fens following the flood the year before. Everyone is scraping a living some legal some not. As the mercury falls from summer to winter Jimmy’s life is on a downward spiral. Well written study of one man’s year trying to survive, most of the characters are completely unlikeable but Jimmy has a bit of charm that has you rooting for him.
March 20, 2019
I have read all 25+ Edric novels and this is one of his best. He writes in a manner that is simple yet captivating. I don’t understand why he’s not read more and accepted as one of England’s best writers.
August 16, 2018
A well-written and somewhat grim novel charting the problems of an ex-serviceman. The setting, Lincolnshire in the early 1950s, is very well conveyed.
June 20, 2019
Brilliant. Another Edric masterpiece
May 11, 2023
I enjoyed this book, Edric style reminded me of Steinbeck.
April 18, 2018
This is my first Robert Edric book and I really liked the synopsis of the story...............unfortunately for me this book just didn't go anywhere. Its a sorry tale of a man who is basically feral. There doesn't seem to be anything behind it more than that, its his story of all of the misdemeanours he accrued during a few months in the early 50s.
It wasn't for me, I kept going with it hoping for something to happen but alas no. It is well written (hence the two stars) but not my cup of tea.
It wasn't for me, I kept going with it hoping for something to happen but alas no. It is well written (hence the two stars) but not my cup of tea.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews