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A Mercy
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Price:
$23.95
$4.99*
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| Part No: | 0307264238 |
| Manufacturer: | Knopf |
| MFG Part: | |
| Customer Rating: | 3.5 / 5.0 |
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A powerful tragedy distilled into a jewel of a masterpiece by the Nobel Prize–winning author of Beloved and, almost like a prelude to that story, set two centuries earlier. In the 1680s the slave trade was still in its infancy. In the Americas, virulent religious and class divisions, prejudice and oppression were rife, providing the fertile soil in which slavery and race hatred were planted and took root. Jacob is an Anglo-Dutch trader and adventurer, with a small holding in the harsh north. Despite his distaste for dealing in “flesh,” he takes a small slave girl in part payment for a bad debt from a plantation owner in Catholic Maryland. This is Florens, “with the hands of a slave and the feet of a Portuguese lady.” Florens looks for love, first from Lina, an older servant woman at her new master’s house, but later from a handsome blacksmith, an African, never enslaved. There are other voices: Lina, whose tribe was decimated by smallpox; their mistress, Rebekka, herself a victim of religious intolerance back in England; Sorrow, a strange girl who’s spent her early years at sea; and finally the devastating voice of Florens’ mother. These are all men and women inventing themselves in the wilderness. A Mercy reveals what lies beneath the surface of slavery. But at its heart it is the ambivalent, disturbing story of a mother who casts off her daughter in order to save her, and of a daughter who may never exorcise that abandonment. Acts of mercy may have unforeseen consequences.
| great story | 2010-03-08 | 5 / 5 |
| | I had to reread the first chapter until I got familiar with the language used. I am so glad I took the time to adjust. After the first chapter I couldn't put it down. The story is wonderful and insightful. |
| A Mercy this book is so short | 2010-02-13 | 1 / 5 |
| | Like other reviewers, I admire Toni Morrison, but I just hated this book. The storytelling is muddled and the book does not seem to really go somewhere. I understand the point about woman s condition, but this is not the standard I have come to expect from the author. Read BELOVED if you are a new reader, not A Mercy - I had a very hard time finishing this book and it is only 165 pages long* |
| A Found Treasure | 2010-01-03 | 4 / 5 |
| Two decades after her first novel "The Bluest Eye", had been published in 1970, Toni Morrison disclosed in an Afterword that she was dissatisfied with the book's language and its structure, and that it 'required a sophistication unavailable to me', she had confessed. Be that as it may, whether that was the case or not, I believe her first novel stands on its own merits, although, the sophistication she referred to, if you will, can be found in her newest work, "A Mercy". Without question, in my view, it is very much a contemporary classic work which resonates, not only with sophistication, but wisdom as well, after all it has been 39 years since the writing of her first novel and Morrison's insights into human nature, especially within the context of race relations, is quite profound.
Morrison has certainly put to good use her fertile mind, her imaginative ideas, and her passion to tell a story, a history of slavery that to her has always been too close for comfort but always within reach--emotionally within her grasp. Certainly her rich family ancestry has passed on to Morrison, many of the stories she so vividly talks about in all her books. The many heartfelt tales her wonderful characters portray and live out throughout her novels, in one form or another, are as breathtaking as they are heart-breaking, and more so, is the story told by Florens in this story.
An unknown character, who we soon learn, named Florens, opens this tale with a confession. A bloody deed. She tells of how she plans and plots her way to YOU, as she refers to the reader's conscience, as I understand it. Almost as if she wants us to be co-conspirators, or witnesses to her crime. At first, this is a confusing, albeit a necessary ploy on Morrison's part. Confusing because the narrative, its syntax that is, is somewhat unusual, because of the narrator's awkward phrasing, and necessary because Morrison knows how to involve her readers-her audience in a partnership. She's a master at getting her readers to participate and become an active part or a willing character in her stories and I believe she succeeds brilliantly in this case.
But it is after that short, poetic, first chapter. The chapter you must read twice, in order to get it, that the story opens up as Jacob Vaark, the "white-man's conscience" in the story makes his entrance and stirs things up a bit. But of course, the very astute Morrison gives Vaark a formidable handicap: He is just as human as any other white man and therefore just as greedy, despite his admonition: "His distaste for dealing in flesh".
Morrison goes on and makes wise use of her invisible, sinister, narrator that opens the story, by using this narrator to begin many other chapters, slowly and methodically cluing us in on her devious plot. The task, the errand at hand she has been sent to carry out in the name of justice. In the name of her mother, a minha mae. (Meaning, "my mother" in Portuguese.) It is all very intriguing and as always, Morrison's plots are very active and take many turns and multiple points of view, which adds a wonderful texture to her writing.
If I had one tiny criticism, which I've justified in my own mind, it is that the ending sounds a bit preachy and authorial. Maybe even hard-hitting to those who receive the character's (and consequently, the author's) brave message. A message that Morrison has penned in subtler ways since her first novel. A message of her pain and the long-suffering among Blacks in a predominantly White world. The injustice wrought on her and her people throughout many generations. A strong admonition that nonetheless needs to be heard, and heeded. I just don't agree that it should be delivered so transparently in a work of fiction. (Could Toni Morrison be testing the waters for her take on an upcoming non-fiction account of slavery? We'll see.)
The characters in this novel are also delineated superficially, which is most likely intentional, as the plot and it's main theme, namely, injustice, are at the center of this powerful and beautifully written story.
If you're a newcomer to Morrison's writing, any of her great novels is a good place to start enjoying everything she has to offer. Start with her first, as mentioned, "The Bluest Eye", and work your way up, one by one, up to "A Mercy". So far her last story, but hopefully, not her last book.
Reading this novel was like discovering an old 17th century relic that contained an important message with valuable seeds inside of it. Seeds that when sown inside your heart, grow magically and eternally into something profound. Something beautiful.
Thank you for the courageous words, Toni Morrison, they are well-received. I applaud you and your wonderful words. (By-the-way, I bought and read this book right after its publication and wrote this review shortly thereafter, but for some reason hesitated posting it on . I bid you peace and much love, Toni Morrison. You are one of the literary greats of our time and I love your work. I can't wait for your next one.
"Beloved" is a favorite too.
Toni Morrison Set: "Song of Solomon," "Jazz," "Beloved," "The Bluest Eye." |
| | I have a real love/hate relationship with Ms. Morrison. I love The Bluest Eye, Sula, and Song of Solomon, but the last few works of hers that I've read have left me baffled. A Mercy falls in the latter category. I didn't get it, couldn't follow it, and was glad when it was over. 2 stars. |
| Experience 17th C. Wilderness Women | 2009-12-15 | 4 / 5 |
| If you READ this short novel you have lost its value. Toni Morrison creates what appears to be an eclectic assemblage of characters in the colonial wilderness of the New World. To grasp the substance of this novel you must experience it through the minds and lives of 4 women at the edge of the wilderness. It is a wilderness of spirit as much as it is a wilderness of place. Paradoxes and images entice and confound. Inequity, classism and racism weave their tapestry of chaos, order and pain among these women and the men upon whom their meager stability depends. An impressionistic novel-with astounding graphic and yet simple images- compels you to devour the entire contents almost in one sitting. And then with breath-taking heartbreak you ask - which is more painful? to know or not to know? And I respond - I just don't know. Both are pain in such distinctly different ways. The pain of knowing leads to action and perceived freedom. In a world where women have no real merit or value their lives are no less complex, at times merging with the animalistic and natural wildness around them..
I felt pain and isolation in much the same way as I did when reading the early feminist novel, The Yellow Wallpaper. Diving beneath the surface of harsh realities for each of these women creates an unforgettable saga of survival and perhaps sanity in the midst of disparate and unforgiving religious colonial elements.
Written in different centuries and about different centuries, these two short novels belong on the shelf together. They haunt me as they wrench spirit from the printed word and transport me into the minds and times of their narrators as if I am there beside them. The Yellow Wallpaper And Other Stories The painful truths they carry tell tales that are still true in the 21st Century. A Mercy (Vintage International) |
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