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cokebend3reads's review against another edition
5.0
Beautiful story as always. I utilized a summary guide after I finished reading which helped with the gaps in understanding.
awkwardsnitch's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
This is a well-written lyrical novel that weaves through these connected lives in vignettes of time. I had trouble at times understanding whose perspective I was reading at a given time.
_whatjennreads's review against another edition
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
sarareader's review against another edition
dark
emotional
sad
medium-paced
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
3.25
mtreads719's review against another edition
challenging
dark
mysterious
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
4.75
amandatacklestbr's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
spenkevich's review against another edition
5.0
‘Slavery broke the world in half,’ Toni Morrison once said, and her body of work has tracked the break and the aftershocks still trembling centuries later like a literary seismograph. In A Mercy, Morrison’s ninth novel, she transports us to the early days of slavery in the New World where white men try to shape their destinies through the land, imposing violence and hardship on the slaves, servants and women who struggle to survive while learning the harsh truth that ‘we never shape the world, the world shapes us.’ Those who are familiar with Morrison will recognize her unflinching gaze into the brutalities faced by Black women from which we should not look away from, though her prose is so exquisite and heart wrenchingly perfect you could not imagine doing so anyways. The story follows the life of Florens, who feels abandoned by her mother and not recognizing her sale into indentured servitude for small landowner, Jacob, was a mercy saving her from the sexual violence of her former owner. Told through shifting perspectives and twisting along the timeline, it also chronicles the relationships between the other women on the farm, all victims to a society ‘of and for men’ where profits come at the cost of blood and labor from Black slaves. Vigorously confronting issues of colonialism, racism, misogyny and the ways religion and a belief in the fruitful dream of the New World held an umbrella over these injustices, A Mercy is an unforgettable novel.
‘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.’
In her essay [b:Playing in the Dark|37405|Playing in the Dark Whiteness and the Literary Imagination|Toni Morrison|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1385160429l/37405._SX50_.jpg|1076615], Toni Morrison wrote ‘what was distinctive in the New World was, first of all, its claim to freedom, and second, the presence of the unfree within the heart of the democratic experiment.’ As her work often explores the idea of slavery as an original sin of the United States (best exemplified here by the serpents on the iron gates leading to Jacob’s new home, a house with the aims to display wealth but symbolic of the sins of slavery that made such wealth possible), A Mercy takes a deep look into the ways the idea of freedom in the New World came at the cost of horrific suffering and exploitation of victims who were very much not free. Jacob sees the land with awe, ‘forests untouched since Noah, shorelines beautiful enough to bring tears, wild food for the taking.’ Though we should note the final words and the notion that the men have come here thinking everything is theirs ‘for the taking.’ And if they do not respect the land, why would they respect the people who were already living upon it, as we see through Lina, an indigenous woman owned by Jacob who struggles with survivors guilt after her entire village perished from smallpox brought by the European colonialists. She is forced to have ‘acknowledged her status as heathen’ and told she can only be ‘purified’ through unpaid, devoted labor to the white people who massacred her land and people for personal gain.
‘You are nothing but wilderness. No constraint. No mind.’
In [b:The Second Sex|457264|The Second Sex|Simone de Beauvoir|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1327978178l/457264._SY75_.jpg|879666], French feminist philosopher [a:Simone de Beauvoir|5548|Simone de Beauvoir|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1555042345p2/5548.jpg] draws a direct line between the mentality of owning land and property with the patriarchal belief of ownership over women, something we see in A Mercy with the juxtaposition of colonialist exploitation of land and the disgustingly legal ownership of the women on the farm. This is not a safe or free land for women. Rebekka, Jacob’s wife, notes that it is legal to beat your wife as long as it is before nightfall and if she is deemed to deserve it, exemplifying how misogyny and violence against women was normalized and even codified into law. The law would always look the other way anyways, especially if the woman is unwed and nobody even flinches at the far worse treatment of Black women. Sexual violence is rampant in this novel and in the histories of most of these women and treated as something they just have to expect and endure.
Generational trauma is seen throughout the novel and each generation is born into a world already set against them, their names already in a ledger of ownership over them and their labor. Florens mother tries to break the cycle, knowing Jacob will at least be better than her own plantation, though what she considers to be a mercy is felt by Florens as a betrayal and abandonment. Which will haunt her forever and frighten her decisions. But through all of this we see why close bonds between the women form—‘they had everything in common with one thing: the promise and threat of men’—and how it helps sustain them in their times of need, and how holding this space for themselves and each other is critical in a society where they are denied space, safety, freedom and a voice.
‘Religion…was a flame fueled by a wondrous hatred.’
Morrison shows how the European religions not only upheld the normalization of patriarchy and racism, but also served to divide people as well. Each of the various denominations are isolated and hostile to each other, with some rather pointed quips such as ‘shallow believers prefer a shallow God. The timid enjoyed a rampaging avenging god.’ Though we also see how religious beliefs are used to justify slavery (there were many common biblical arguments people used), to enact violence against the indigenous for being ‘heathens’ and to erase their culture through ways not just limited to missionary work. In contrast, we see characters such as Lina and those oppressed by the various denominations ignore their divisions to lump them as one oppressor (such as Lina calling them all ‘Europes’). Though despite their dismissal of non-Christian practices, it is the Blacksmith’s cultural healing that revives Rebekka when prayer is found to be ineffective.
‘Fire. How quick. How purposefully it ate whatever had been built, what had been life. Cleansing somehow and scandalous in beauty.’
The extensive religious imagery all points to one idea: slavery as sin. And it is a sin that breaks the world and overtakes everyone. Even though Jacob initially dislikes the idea of slaves, he still reaps the profits of slavery and eventually gives in to participation in the slave trade. His new home made possible by slavery becomes almost a cursed land and symbol of sin, with his punishment becoming a litany of miseries and deaths in his family and even he perishes from disease. It is all consuming though, and we see how a small farm cannot compete with large plantations who willfully force slave labor to take in profits that would put anyone else out of business unless they too commit the sin of owning slaves and upholding the violence of slavery.
‘It was there I learned how I was not a person from my country, nor from my families.’
Reputation is seen as essential in this society, but if ‘what a man leaves behind is what a man is,’ and they are leaving a legacy of violence, racial injustice and misogyny in their wake, then these men are symbolic of sin as well as Morrison explains. A Mercy is a devastating novel that forces us all to confront this horrendous history that still perpetuates itself in modern society and generational traumas (the novel [b:Homegoing|27071490|Homegoing|Yaa Gyasi|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1448108591l/27071490._SY75_.jpg|47113792] by [a:Yaa Gyasi|14493315|Yaa Gyasi|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1597671521p2/14493315.jpg] is an excellent expression of this). Toni Morrison was a giant of literature, well deserving of the Nobel Prize and left an awe-inspiring legacy not only on the US literary scene but all across the world. While a difficult novel to face, full of sexual violence and hardships, A Mercy is a stunning work that speaks to important topics and does so with writing that will sear straight through you.
5/5
‘I welcomed the circling sharks but they avoided me as if knowing I preferred their teeth to the chains around my neck my waist my ankles.’
‘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.’
In her essay [b:Playing in the Dark|37405|Playing in the Dark Whiteness and the Literary Imagination|Toni Morrison|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1385160429l/37405._SX50_.jpg|1076615], Toni Morrison wrote ‘what was distinctive in the New World was, first of all, its claim to freedom, and second, the presence of the unfree within the heart of the democratic experiment.’ As her work often explores the idea of slavery as an original sin of the United States (best exemplified here by the serpents on the iron gates leading to Jacob’s new home, a house with the aims to display wealth but symbolic of the sins of slavery that made such wealth possible), A Mercy takes a deep look into the ways the idea of freedom in the New World came at the cost of horrific suffering and exploitation of victims who were very much not free. Jacob sees the land with awe, ‘forests untouched since Noah, shorelines beautiful enough to bring tears, wild food for the taking.’ Though we should note the final words and the notion that the men have come here thinking everything is theirs ‘for the taking.’ And if they do not respect the land, why would they respect the people who were already living upon it, as we see through Lina, an indigenous woman owned by Jacob who struggles with survivors guilt after her entire village perished from smallpox brought by the European colonialists. She is forced to have ‘acknowledged her status as heathen’ and told she can only be ‘purified’ through unpaid, devoted labor to the white people who massacred her land and people for personal gain.
‘You are nothing but wilderness. No constraint. No mind.’
In [b:The Second Sex|457264|The Second Sex|Simone de Beauvoir|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1327978178l/457264._SY75_.jpg|879666], French feminist philosopher [a:Simone de Beauvoir|5548|Simone de Beauvoir|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1555042345p2/5548.jpg] draws a direct line between the mentality of owning land and property with the patriarchal belief of ownership over women, something we see in A Mercy with the juxtaposition of colonialist exploitation of land and the disgustingly legal ownership of the women on the farm. This is not a safe or free land for women. Rebekka, Jacob’s wife, notes that it is legal to beat your wife as long as it is before nightfall and if she is deemed to deserve it, exemplifying how misogyny and violence against women was normalized and even codified into law. The law would always look the other way anyways, especially if the woman is unwed and nobody even flinches at the far worse treatment of Black women. Sexual violence is rampant in this novel and in the histories of most of these women and treated as something they just have to expect and endure.
‘There is no protection. To be female in this place is to be an open wound that cannot heal. Even if scars form, the festering is ever below.’
Generational trauma is seen throughout the novel and each generation is born into a world already set against them, their names already in a ledger of ownership over them and their labor. Florens mother tries to break the cycle, knowing Jacob will at least be better than her own plantation, though what she considers to be a mercy is felt by Florens as a betrayal and abandonment. Which will haunt her forever and frighten her decisions. But through all of this we see why close bonds between the women form—‘they had everything in common with one thing: the promise and threat of men’—and how it helps sustain them in their times of need, and how holding this space for themselves and each other is critical in a society where they are denied space, safety, freedom and a voice.
‘Religion…was a flame fueled by a wondrous hatred.’
Morrison shows how the European religions not only upheld the normalization of patriarchy and racism, but also served to divide people as well. Each of the various denominations are isolated and hostile to each other, with some rather pointed quips such as ‘shallow believers prefer a shallow God. The timid enjoyed a rampaging avenging god.’ Though we also see how religious beliefs are used to justify slavery (there were many common biblical arguments people used), to enact violence against the indigenous for being ‘heathens’ and to erase their culture through ways not just limited to missionary work. In contrast, we see characters such as Lina and those oppressed by the various denominations ignore their divisions to lump them as one oppressor (such as Lina calling them all ‘Europes’). Though despite their dismissal of non-Christian practices, it is the Blacksmith’s cultural healing that revives Rebekka when prayer is found to be ineffective.
‘Fire. How quick. How purposefully it ate whatever had been built, what had been life. Cleansing somehow and scandalous in beauty.’
The extensive religious imagery all points to one idea: slavery as sin. And it is a sin that breaks the world and overtakes everyone. Even though Jacob initially dislikes the idea of slaves, he still reaps the profits of slavery and eventually gives in to participation in the slave trade. His new home made possible by slavery becomes almost a cursed land and symbol of sin, with his punishment becoming a litany of miseries and deaths in his family and even he perishes from disease. It is all consuming though, and we see how a small farm cannot compete with large plantations who willfully force slave labor to take in profits that would put anyone else out of business unless they too commit the sin of owning slaves and upholding the violence of slavery.
‘It was there I learned how I was not a person from my country, nor from my families.’
Reputation is seen as essential in this society, but if ‘what a man leaves behind is what a man is,’ and they are leaving a legacy of violence, racial injustice and misogyny in their wake, then these men are symbolic of sin as well as Morrison explains. A Mercy is a devastating novel that forces us all to confront this horrendous history that still perpetuates itself in modern society and generational traumas (the novel [b:Homegoing|27071490|Homegoing|Yaa Gyasi|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1448108591l/27071490._SY75_.jpg|47113792] by [a:Yaa Gyasi|14493315|Yaa Gyasi|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1597671521p2/14493315.jpg] is an excellent expression of this). Toni Morrison was a giant of literature, well deserving of the Nobel Prize and left an awe-inspiring legacy not only on the US literary scene but all across the world. While a difficult novel to face, full of sexual violence and hardships, A Mercy is a stunning work that speaks to important topics and does so with writing that will sear straight through you.
5/5
‘I welcomed the circling sharks but they avoided me as if knowing I preferred their teeth to the chains around my neck my waist my ankles.’
emarlett11's review against another edition
challenging
dark
mysterious
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.75
emmacarambola's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0