Reviews with content warning for Sexual assault - A Mercy

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A Mercy by Toni Morrison

11 reviews

serendipitysbooks's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

A Mercy is yet another masterpiece by Toni Morrison. It's short but dense and sometimes seems inscrutable with frequent shifts in time and point of view not being clearly signified. However, this book is well worth the effort. It's set in colonial America in the 1680s. Jacob Vaark is a Dutch migrant, hard-working and idealistic, seemingly opposed to slavery; Rebekka his cheerful and hard-working wife. They have two servants - Lina, an indigenous woman, and Sorrow, the sole survivor of a shipwreck. And then Jacob is persuaded to accept a young enslaved girl, Florens, as payment for a debt. The story provides a meaningful exploration of the gulf between slavery and freedom, with indentured servants in a murky middle area. I also enjoyed the way Morrison showed how the Vaarks, two once kind and idealistic people, changed for the worse over time. Hint - slavery, greed, and the desire for staus all played a role, as did death, disappointment, and the struggle to survive. Violence against women, religious difference and hypocrisy, the natural environment and its exploitation, female community and its limitations are other themes explored to good effect. However, the most impactful theme for me was the book's exploration of motherhood, particularly the final chapter, where we learn why Florens's mother was so willing for her to be sold away. However, as always with Morrison's novels, it is her writing, her prose, and the depth and breadth of her storytelling that is remarkable. In less than 200 pages, and these pages are neither large nor densely packed with tiny font, she's gifted us with rich characterisation and a story that really captures the heart and pathos of America's early colonial years in a realistic and inclusive way so different from the flawed, limited, inaccurate and stereotypical traditional stories often associated with the era.

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adelita18's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional informative reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5

This was a challenging audiobook to follow. There are no traditional chapter divisions and the author/narrator, Ms. Morrison, read the story in a very quiet, monotone affect. It made it extremely difficult to place which character's perspective you were listening to at a given point in time and required a lot of skipping back to try to parse out the change in point of view.

That being said, Ms. Morrison really dove head first into examining the roles/relationships religion, concepts and implementation of different types of slavery (bondage vs. indenture), cultural and racial biases, and various social mores in the early melting pot of 1680s colonial America affected people of all walks and ways of life. I'd like to go back and re-read this as a physical or Kindle edition because I felt like a lot of the plot was lost in trying to follow the audiobook.

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darlingkelly's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional 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

4.0

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itiafurniture's review against another edition

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dark emotional 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? Yes

4.5

Only Toni Morrison can present dark themes with such grace, and present whole characters that don’t abide stereotypes that often consume certain genres. The direction of the story was unexpected, and she weaves the relationships of characters so effortlessly into the story. I would have loved to know more about Lina, and Rebekka’s story felt heavy handed in comparison to the others, but the final chapter made up for that 10 fold. Definitely a great reread.

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