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    A Mercy: A Novel
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    A Mercy: A Novel
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    A Mercy: A Novel
    Audiobook6 hours

    A Mercy: A Novel

    Published by Penguin Random House Audio

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    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.

    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.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateNov 11, 2008
    ISBN9780739332559
    Unavailable
    A Mercy: A Novel

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    Reviews for A Mercy

    3.5/5

    728 ratings81 reviews

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    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      Morrison focuses the story around four women. Rebekka is white, the wife of Jacob Vaark, a landowner and trader who bought Lina, a Native American woman, to work as a servant for her. Despite their initial distrust and dislike of each other, Rebekka and Lina forge an unlikely partnership and quickly come to depend on each other. Out of kindness, Rebekka and her husband have taken in Sorrow, a poor black girl who has been raped and abused, and later Florens, the daughter of a slave, who comes into the master’s care when her mother begs him to take her daughter from their current master as payment for a debt.The narrative alternates between these characters without warning or notation and switches between first- and third-person perspectives. The action centers on Florens, who has left the farm on a mission to find the blacksmith, with whom she is in love, and who she believes can help cure the Mistress of illness she has fallen into. Morrison gives us chapters from Florens’s perspective, as she expresses her love and desire for the blacksmith and narrates her journey to find him, and I found those to be the most compelling parts of the book.Morrison also gives us Rebekka’s perspective and Lina’s point-of-view, both of which are interesting, but neither of which compares to the chapters on Sorrow, who, after giving birth, becomes Complete. Morrison’s use of symbolism and her trademark depth of meaning are at work in A Mercy, and she succeeds in telling a powerful story that at only 169 pages packs quite a punch.I am so in love with Morrison’s writing that I’m finding it difficult to summarize the plot of the book, so I’ll skip the full-length book review and simply say that this is a fantastic read and an excellent exploration of the issues of race, class, color, and gender that Morrison always consistently handles with insight, intelligence, and precision. Not a single word is wasted.Further discusson at The Book Lady's Blog.
    • 4/5
      This book was recommended as one of the 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die and it was a thought-provoking read from the perspective of slaves and slave owners in early Colonial America.
    • 4/5
      I don't know how anyone can read Toni Morrison to analyse how she writes because her words sink me effortlessly into her world and I walk with her characters - no way to stand back. This book has an ever shifting voice as each person speaks. And while you can feel the distance of time in the voices, there is no distance in the relevance to today.
    • 4/5
      This book was recommended as one of the 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die and it was a thought-provoking read from the perspective of slaves and slave owners in early Colonial America.
    • 3/5
      Set in the colonial period, the story shifts from point of view to another and centers around a young slave girl who is sold--at the encouragement of her mother--to a settler. The mother encouraged this because she observed that the settler seemed to be a kind man, and indeed he does seem to treat the slave girl well. However as the reader sees in the lives of all the characters life on the frontier is harsh and life during those times was often marked with cruelty and injustice.This story was a slow read for me, the dialogue and the way the reader was thrown into the middle of it made it hard to figure out was was going on, especially at first. It does tackle some tough issues, which made a good book for discussion at our book group meeting but all of the members did struggle with actually reading it.
    • 5/5
      (CD audiobook) Multiple points of view are flawlessly woven into a seamless imagining of early colonial American life when slaves and indentured servants far outnumbered free people in the southern colonies.Toni Morrison narrates her own novel in a unique and captivating style, giving her words weight with poetic tempo and pauses that lend an understated drama to the story, making it compelling and a bit hypnotic.Characters are easy to like, plot elements keep the action moving without being over-dramatic, and thematic development is masterful. You will walk away from this book knowing how slavery demeans everyone and makes all -- whether slave or not -- utterly dependent on each other. This interdependence may have the surface appearance of a family unit, but in a crisis, that pretense shatters to the detriment of all.There is every reason to recommend this novel, not the least of which is the narration, but also the beauty of restrained prose, and the care given to its historicity.
    • 3/5
      This book is set in the 1680's around the slave trade. I found this book a little confusing at times. I couldn't figure out who was doing the talking or narrating at times. You have a mother who tries to save her daughter by selling her into slavery. The daughter has to try and deal with abandonment.The daughter is sold to Sir who owns a farm. She is not familiar with working on a farm and is not very useful at first. This was an okay book.
    • 3/5
      Expectedly lyrical
    • 2/5
      I was very disappointed in this book after The Bluest Eye. I felt it was repetitive and tedious. It was also very difficult to keep track of the characters and to know who was speaking. The information regarding people who are enslaved and how religion and families are involved is very important, and I wish it had been presented more clearly.
    • 3/5
      Very poetic look at a the beginning of America's troubled history.
    • 5/5
      Wow what a great book! I'm already thinking of re-reading it!
    • 4/5
      Fairly quickly on, I realized that really the strength of this book is in its character study. With that framework, I settled in to enjoy this. There is essentially no plot or action.The story is set in colonial Maryland and is about the people on a farmstead - the farmer/trader, his wife, an Indian servant, two female slaves, a black freedman blacksmith, and two white indentured servants. Through each of their viewpoints, we see how each are affected by the death of the farmer/trader and the sickness/recovery of his wife. We learn how they came to be on the farm, their roles, their relationships, their conditions, their aspirations, their betrayals.The most interesting things about the interview with Toni Morrison afterwards, I felt, was the theme of betrayal and how each character acted/reacted within the context of the options available - that none of them were particularly good or wicked people, but that each profoundly affected the life of the others.The story is beautifully told but somewhat hard to follow at times -- at least listening to. The narration abruptly switches between viewpoints and times. Though there is a clear and consistent 'I' and 'you', it is sometimes difficult to figure out which characters these are.It is, however, overall, an excellent narrative and characterization of what it was like to live in colonial Maryland, rich with detail and an exposition of the difficulties and potential futures of the various characters - each of which represent or illustrate various social classes/status. Morrison spent a good deal of effort and interest in the research, and it shows.
    • 5/5
      A Mercy is a very fine book about colonial America told from many perspectives. The characters are; a white farmer and trader of goods; his mail-order bride from England; their servants, a Native American woman and a free, but severely traumatized African woman; and some hired black men, some indentured and one free, who come to work on their farm. The memories of many of these are explored and the way their stories intersect is shown from several angles. Lays bare the stark cruelty of slavery in many ways and the especial trials of women unprotected by men, as well as how infant mortality and smallpox affect this tiny community. Also how narrow religious beliefs, mixed with the superstitions of the time could have a pernicious, even fatal, influence on people. All this is accomplished through personal stories of characters who come alive in the pages of this thin book. Only 167 pages. Highly recommended.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      A beautifully written, spare, almost poetic story of 17th century America.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Brilliant. Heart-breaking.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      The blurb from the publisher: 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.The Short of It:Read by the author, this is a mesmerizing story of love, betrayal and pain.The Rest of It:I've read a few of Morrison's books and I always have trouble with them. For me, the words lack a certain rhythm and I find myself re-reading pages that I've just read. I never understood the draw. That said, my book group chose A Mercy for October's discussion and I was sort of dreading it and looking forward to it at the same time.For one, it's been years since I've read one of her books. Perhaps I've grown as a reader. Perhaps my experience this time will be different. I promptly went out and got the book, read a chapter or two and then stopped. Nope, still the same. Still haltingly strange for me. So then I ordered the book on audio. It's read by Toni Morrison and I figured that if it didn't strike a chord with me, and she was reading it as it was meant to be heard, then I would give up on Morrison altogether.I'm happy to report that I loved it! Morrison's voice is melodic at times but definitely has a certain cadence to it. That haltingly strange way of speaking that I mentioned in the book form, is present in her speech patterns, but hearing her voice brought it all together for me. I then went back to the book and had no problems reading it. Have you ever done that?After smoothing all this out, I settled into the story and found it to be haunting at times, yet the strength of these women amazed me. There is a wonderful interview with the author at the end of the audio book which should not be missed. Now that I've had this experience, I plan to re-read some of her other books.Have you ever had a hard time reading a famous author and then wondered what all the fuss was about? Have you ever resorted to the audio book to see if it was different in some way?
    • 3/5
      Truly a 3.5. Beautifully prose, vivid portrayal of early Colonial America. This is a story of slavery of all kinds, love and betrayal. Morrison tells the story through many different characters, primarily Florens, an African slave who tells her story from the first person and is talking to someone we can't immediately identify. The time and place jumping can be confusing.
    • 2/5
      Really a 2.5 or a 2.75. My first Morrison, but I have another one or two on my shelves and will continue. I am not a big fan of stories that are tragic every way you look at them. The stream of consciousness was a little hard to follow at times as well. This would be a good book for discussion.
    • 1/5
      60. A Mercy (Audio) by Toni Morrison read by the author (2008, 6:26, 176 pages in paper format, listened Aug 24 - Sep 2)Rating: 1 starTorture on audio. The book is a wandering mess, made worse on audio. I could go on with a long complaint. I don't think I'll try another of her books on audio.One highlight is that Morrison gives an interview about the book, which is interesting. She tells how she spent six weeks on one small part of the book about dealing with a wild boar, only to later learn that there were no boars in the America's in this era (The book takes place around 1690, mainly on a farm somewhere in current New York state). She replaced the boar with a bear. She also talks about the fluid state and varieties of slavery in this era and place, which she meant to explore. The book is on ten notable books of 2008 lists, so apparently she has some success with this, it just didn't trickle down to me.
    • 4/5
      I love Toni Morrison's writing style. I agree with Ann, that it provided an interesting historical perspective of slavery and indentured servitude. I don't think I have ever read a book that dealt with slavery in the United States before it was a well established insitution with so many laws governing people and their rights. It provided an interesting perspective. I also loved all voices of the different characters of the novel.
    • 4/5
      Poetic and fresh. People would like to compare it to [b:Beloved|6149|Beloved|Toni Morrison|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165555299s/6149.jpg|736076], but it is very different, and not a masterpiece like Beloved, nor does it have the feeling of saga and absolute tragedy that Beloved has. I love the themes of mother-to-daughter and the complexities and pains therein. Goes quickly, is very beautiful to read, has wonderful amounts of history strung throughout.
    • 3/5
      Classic Morrison. Reminiscent of Beloved while set at an earlier (late 17th century) more fluid point in the developing story of "race" and "family" in the "New World." Not as complex or sustained as the author's aforementioned masterpiece, however. Morrison cuts and runs a bit too soon for this novel to achieve similar greatness. The destinies of A Mercy's motley assemblage of characters is perhaps summed up in this paragraph late in the novel (p. 155): "They once thought they were a kind of family because together they had carved companionship out of isolation. But the family they imagined they had become was false. Whatever each one loved, sought or escaped, their futures were separate and anyone's guess. One thing was certain, courage alone would not be enough. Minus bloodlines, he saw nothing yet on the horizon to unite them. Nevertheless, remembering how the curate described what existed before Creation, Scully [an indentured as well as a hired hand:] saw dark matter out there, thick, unknowable, aching to be made into a world."
      As for the moral of the story. Leave that to the mother who abandons/ gives away her daughter in order to "save" her: "to be given dominion over another is a hard thing; to wrest dominion over another is a wrong thing; to give dominion of yourself to another is a wicked thing."
    • 4/5
      I've reached a point in this book where I'm really enjoying it. I've heard people say that it's sort of a companion book to Beloved, and I get that. One of the things I like best about Beloved is how it pulls together so many of the themes that Morrison uses throughout many of her novels. A Mercy does the same thing, and so I think it does hark back to Beloved (both in terms of plot similarities and in terms of its major themes), but it also fits very nicely into her body of work as a whole. I'll probably have more to say on that once I've finished the book.

      Okay--I'm done now. This was a tough one to rate, because it's hard for me to think about any of Morrison's books without comparing them to her other novels. The very end of the book pushed it up a notch for me. Her writing in this book is perhaps especially poetic in that it's very packed. I think it would stand up to serious study. Having said that, some of her other novels might be more flat-out enjoyable because they have a smoother narrative flow. I'm not sure that makes a book better or worse. I think that all of her books have some of both kinds of writing.
    • 1/5
      This book was very difficult to get into and the characters were underdeveloped.
    • 3/5
      A very sad and utterly depressing read.
      I didn't like the structure and complicated narration. It somehow detracted from the force of the story sometimes.
    • 1/5
      I didn't get past disk 2 of 6 on this one before it was due back at the library, and I wasn't interested enough to renew it. I'm going to give the book the benefit of the doubt and blame my apathy on the author's reading ability. Morrison reads the book for the CD. Unlike actors who read, she does not give characters voices or read with emotional intonation. Instead, there is a consistent rhythm to her voice, which is perfect when you want to be lulled to sleep. It's awful when you need to pay attention to the story. If I try this book again, it will be using the traditional print version that I can hold in my hands and read at my own pace.
    • 5/5
      A profound reflection on gender, faith, slavery and the colonization of the Americas. No wonder she won the Nobel for Literature!

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      I loved this book so much I had to go through it with a highlighter and a pen for underlining, which is something I've never done before. I found it captivating and insightful with very interesting characters.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      This small, stream-of-consciousness novel, set in 17th century America, is not easy to get into at first. It’s like a river that’s flowing too fast. But once you take the plunge, it’s definitely worth it. Each character reveals her story in turn, with the outlines gradually becoming clear. All together, they draw an achingly sensitive picture of the early days of slavery.
    • 5/5
      Morrison's style of immersing the reader in the world of her characters and letting the story unfold naturally is exemplified with beauty and grace in this superbly woven novel. I highly recommend this book.