Mea Culpa

KIRKUSREVIEWIn Muro’s debut novel, a young man comes of age in unusual circumstances. The story begins with Eddie looking back on his youth living on the grounds of a Chicago insane asylum in the 1960s. Muro creates a strange world, as readers would expect a mental hospital to be, but it’s as real as everyday life. Mea Culpa is not for the faint of heart; as it opens, he witnesses a Catholic priest molesting his sister. Readers go on to learn that Eddie’s love interest, Patricia, was sexually abused by her father, and many other patients in the asylum have similarly gruesome pasts. Some are foster children with nowhere else to go, others are political dissidents shut away on spurious charges. The patients’ back stories illustrate the corruption and injustice that drove the mental health system at the time. Early on, it’s clear that Eddie is gifted. His relationship with God and with the inmates, drive’s the narrative. Muro, in well-paced, readable prose, shows how these stories contributed to Eddie’s spiritual development and manages to bring light to the afflicted patients and, ultimately, to himself, even in the midst of tragedy. Muro develops clear themes over the course of the novel, showing Eddie’s relationship to the Catholic Church, in which he was raised, and to the faith he later finds. Muro’s novel is largely based on his experiences growing up in an asylum, where his father worked as a psychiatrist. Mea Culpa is a challenging, but ultimately an uplifting novel.