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A Mercy | 
 enlarge | Author: Toni Morrison
Publisher: Knopf
Category: Book
List Price: $23.95
Buy New: $13.84
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Rating:  37 reviews
Sales Rank: 49
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1st
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 176
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 9.4 x 5.9 x 1
ISBN: 0307264238
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780307264237
ASIN: 0307264238
Publication Date: November 11, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
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Product Description
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.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 32 more reviews...
 Overwhelming and Beautiful January 5, 2009
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
Let me preface this by saying that this is the first work of Toni Morrison's that I have read. Now I know that it will not be my last. It's nearing 3 AM where I am now, and I have just finished this overwhelming novel. I will make every effort to convey my thoughts coherently enough to do justice to this wonderful book.
I of course knew that Ms. Morrison's legacy as a giant of American literature included a history of notoriously difficult prose, and so I approached this novel with an admitted degree of apprehension. Yet, reading other reviewers who complain her style is unreadable, or negative reviews that admit the book was never even read, I'm convinced many readers are simply lazy. There are lines of this novel that demand to be reread and may seem foggy on first (or second) recitation, but their intention quickly becomes clear, and it really is not that difficult at all. You simply must pay attention to the often tricky usages of the English language. Ms. Morrison is not abusing syntax or words, she's playing with them. Another reviewer mentions a line that also stalled my attention on the first page, spoken by frequent narrator Florens: "...can you read? If a pea hen refuses to brood, I read it quickly and, sure enough, that night I see a minha mae standing hand in hand with her little boy, my shoes jamming the pockets of her apron."
That line perplexed me at first, but soon it became obvious. Ah, we're not using 'to read' in the sense of reading a book, but rather to read signs, to read omens. This opens the novel, and by the conclusion, we've come full circle and the symbolism of the hen that doesn't brood materializes in the spirit of Florens' mother ('minha mae' = 'my mother,' in Portuguese). This comes at the novel's heartbreaking climax, when you feel this young girl is just as much a part of you as she is of the pages. Read these opening pages closely. Everything returns.
While Florens is the only speaker of first person narration, there are many other stories and histories relayed throughout the course of this novel, made all the more impressive by its brevity.
In the video of Ms. Morrison speaking about her novel on this same page, she spoke of constructing it in the manner of an engine, and that while we receive respite from Florens' narrative to trace the roots of the novel's other characters, the train is still in motion. Her craftsmanship is impeccable. While reading Sorrow's story I felt a culminating angst while still wondering where Florens' unlawful travels would land her. That is the magic of this novel. All of the characters are so beautifully drawn, you feel genuine concern and emotion for all of them.
This novel is a marvelous achievement and I will be recommending it to many. It reminded me of why I first fell in love with reading. I have nothing left but Thank you, Toni Morrison. And Bravo.
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