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michaelion's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
mysterious
reflective
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
I read this on and off over 22 days because I went on vacation but it's Toni Morrison so of course it was amazing and I didn't lose the momentum in the gaps of days between reading chapters. Many thoughts many ideas... In my notes I marked this book is a lot more grounded in reality than magical realism. What's the difference? That's a great question... And at the end the world keeps going on. Ms Morrison, I know I said it before but you've done it again.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Child abuse, Child death, Death, Pedophilia, Racism, Slavery, Terminal illness, Murder, Abandonment, Colonisation, and Pandemic/Epidemic
Moderate: Domestic abuse, Genocide, Miscarriage, Misogyny, Racial slurs, Sexual content, Blood, Grief, Religious bigotry, and Injury/Injury detail
Minor: Rape
sherbertwells's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
“Don’t be afraid. My telling can’t hurt you in spite of what I have done and I promise to lie quietly in the dark—weeping perhaps or occasionally seeing the blood once more—but I will never again unfold my limbs to rise up and bare teeth. I explain. You can think what I tell you a confession, if you like, but one fully of curiosities familiar only in dreams and during those moments when a dog’s profile plays in the steam of a kettle. Or when a cornhusk doll sitting on a shelf is soon splaying in the corner of a room and the wicked of how it got there is plain. Stranger things happen all the time everywhere. You know. I know you know. One question is who is responsible?” (3)
I did it, everybody! I read my first book by Toni Morrison!
It never appears at the top of “Where to Start with Toni Morrison” lists; that honor usually goes to Beloved or The Bluest Eye, both of which I hope to read soon. But the slim 2008 novel A Mercy turned out to be the perfect place to begin my journey with the famous author.
For one, it’s a book that deals with slavery in pre-revolutionary New York, a topic that intrigued me when I encountered it in the nonfiction compendium Four Hundred Souls. It also didn’t hurt that such a setting is a study topic on my upcoming APUSH exam, or that Morrisson is one of my English teachers’ favorite authors (thanks, Ms. Saunders!).
But the chief reason I picked up this book was my interest in its central character, Florens. Born into slavery on a Maryland plantation, she is covertly taught how to read and write before being sold as debt to a New York trader. She shares the slim volume—and her owner’s wilderness estate—with many characters, but while their perspectives wind through the former like the brass snakes adorning the opulent gate of the latter, there is no question to whom A Mercy belongs.
Most characters are only given a single chapter. Their tone forecasts Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall, which came out the following year. “In short,” declares one man, “1682 and Virginia was still a mess. Who could keep up with the pitched battles for God, king and land?” (11). Morrison uses these chapters to explore the complexity of power dynamics on the estate. Almost everyone is an outsider: Lina is a “praying Indian,” Sorrow an unwed mother, and even the white farmhands on the estate are exiles from their native England. Each character unpacks their personal history with paper gloves, observing the significance or the folly of the colonial project and pushing the story an inch closer toward its uncivilized conclusion. But Florens’ monologues are stylistically distinct. She makes extensive use of the passive voice, perhaps because she is enslaved or because she wishes to distance herself from the story she writes. Her audience is a definite “you”: a free black smith to whom she becomes attached.
“Night comes and I steal a candle. I carry an ember in a pot to light it. To see more of you. When it is lit I shield the flame with my hand. I watch you sleeping. I watch too long. Am careless. The flame burns my palm. I think if you wake and see me seeing you I will die. I run away not knowing then you are seeing me seeing you. And when at last our eyes hit I am not dead. For the first time I am live” (38)
Despite its premise—a group of orphans and outcasts cling to one another in a challenging wilderness—A Mercy is not for fans of the “found family” trope. It’s too sad for that. The nascent industry of American slavery ensures that mistress and servant cannot reconcile, that lost mothers and children cannot be found again. In the silence between characters hangs doomed love, for other people or for the pioneer covenants that stretch like spiderwebs over the strange new continent.
“Rebekka’s understanding of God was faint, except as a larger kind of king, but she quieted the shame of insufficient devotion by assuming that He could be no grander nor better than the imagination of the believer. Shallow believers preferred a shallow god. The timid enjoyed a rampaging avenging god. In spite of her father’s eagerness, her mother warned her that savages or nonconformists would slaughter her as soon as she landed…Brawls, knifings and kidnaps were so common in the city of her birth that the warnings of slaughter in a new, unseen world were like threats of bad weather” (75)
Did I mention that Toni Morrison is Catholic? Because this book is also about religion. In age where religious freedom spurred European immigration to North America, each character has a unique relationship to their God—and not always a good one. Religion is a weapon against loneliness, but also against the perceived “other.” Although A Mercy is not set in Massachusetts, where the famous witch trials would later occur, it easily could be. In one scene, Florens is mistaken for the devil by white townspeople. She is something more powerful.
She is the narrator of her own story.
And it’s a good story too! It’s a little bleak, but it never denies the humanity of its characters. I am told this empathy is a central characteristic of Morrison’s writing. If that is the case, A Mercy may be the first book by her that I read, but it will be far from the last.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Slavery and Religious bigotry
Moderate: Adult/minor relationship, Child death, Racism, Rape, Sexual content, Violence, Blood, Medical content, Grief, and Pregnancy
Minor: Vomit
The ages of the characters are very ambiguous throughout the story. Sorrow and Florens are described as "a child" by some people--probably she is in her teens--and is in a relationship with the smith, who seems to be an adult man.