A Mercy
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. more
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by Toni Morrison. ISBN13: 9780307264237. ISBN10: 0307264238. Published by Random House, Inc.. Edition: 08 Used
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A Mercy (Books)
General Fiction - A powerful tragedy distilled into a jewel of a masterpiece by the Nobel Prize winning author of... |
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Mercy
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A Mercy
A powerful tragedy distilled into a jewel of a masterpiece by the Nobel Prize-winning author of Beloved and, almost... |
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A Mercy
Pages: 176, Edition: 1st, Hardcover, Knopf |
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Hardcover, A Mercy
General Fiction - A powerful tragedy distilled into a jewel of a masterpiece by the Nobel Prize winning author of... |
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ProductReviews75/100 (53 Reviews)
Recent Reviews
- 5/5
- From: Amazon
- Posted: Feb-02-2009
- Makes You Feel the Emotion of the Characters
Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison explored the human costs of slavery in her earlier novel Beloved, the 1987 Pulitzer Prize winner for Literature, and chosen as the best work of American fiction in the last 25 years in a poll run by New York...
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- 2/5
- From: Amazon
- Posted: Feb-02-2009
- Only if you love, love, love Toni Morrison
If you're into Toni Morrison you will find this story and style quite typical of her work. There's always a great sadness to the plight of women who are disenfranchised by society in her novels. But this story seems to make only a...
- read full review | report as inappropriate
- 4/5
- From: Amazon
- Posted: Jan-31-2009
- Good, but short
This was a good, creative story, but not very long, (under 200 pages). I think I was expecting more of a novel than a short story. This was my first Toni Morrison book. She is an excellent writer.
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- 1/5
- From: Amazon
- Posted: Jan-31-2009
- THROWN AWAY
PLEASE DO NOT BUY THIS BOOK. IF YOU MUST READ IT, CHECK IT OUT A THE LIBRARY. MY COPY WENT STRAIGHT TO THE DUMPSTER AFTER COMPLETION. I DID NOT EVEN WISH TO DONATE IT TO A CHARITY BOOK DRIVE. APPARENTLY THIS AUTHOR HAD PREVIOUSLY...
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Selected Reviews
- 5/5
- From: Amazon
- Posted: Feb-02-2009
- Makes You Feel the Emotion of the Characters
Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison explored the human costs of slavery in her earlier novel Beloved, the 1987 Pulitzer Prize winner for Literature, and chosen as the best work of American fiction in the last 25 years in a poll run by New York...
- read full review | report as inappropriate
- 3/5
- From: Amazon
- Posted: Jan-06-2009
- Not happy
The story was excellent as the author style came shining through. However the book itself has uneven edges as though it was cut uneven, I have never had a book in this condition. Disappointed with the quality of pages.
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- 2/5
- From: Amazon
- Posted: Feb-02-2009
- Only if you love, love, love Toni Morrison
If you're into Toni Morrison you will find this story and style quite typical of her work. There's always a great sadness to the plight of women who are disenfranchised by society in her novels. But this story seems to make only a...
- read full review | report as inappropriate
