A Mercy | 
 enlarge | Author: Toni Morrison
Publisher: Knopf
Category: Book
List Price: $23.95
Buy New: $13.89
You Save: $10.06 (42%)
New (60) Used (14) Collectible (13) from $13.89
Avg. Customer Rating:  36 reviews
Sales Rank: 50
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1st
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 176
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 9.4 x 5.9 x 1
ISBN: 0307264238
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780307264237
ASIN: 0307264238
Publication Date: November 11, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
|
| Also Available In:
|
| Similar Items:
|
| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
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.
|
| Customer Reviews: Read 31 more reviews...
 Why I like Alice Walker so much more. January 7, 2009
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
A friend and I were talking a few months back about Madame Nobel Laureate, Toni, and why we both shake our heads at the dismissal of a truly brave artist such as Alice Walker. So what am I doing on this page other than I couldn't help but give this new, slender novel a read?(--which is exactly what I did over the holidays). My complaint with Toni is her almost obsessive exploration of the slave wound. That's the first thing. Not that I think this subject isn't worthy, it clearly is. But Morrison here is stretching things a bit in this attempt to give us verisimilitude a la late 17th century. The inner spectrum on these characters or at least, these attempts to give us such does not work here. It really seems to me that Ms. Morrison feels a sense of obligation, post-Nobel, to continue to explore this mighty subject and the story reads as if she were, indeed, under a set of self-imposed obligations to do so.
That's the problem in a nutshell.
Glad I read this, but cannot really recommend. And as far as Alice Walker goes, I commend that author for truly being an original artist and exploring edgy subjects--which is what a real artist is supposed to do! (ie: POSSESSING THE SECRET OF JOY) I also admire her artistic integrity in not sentimentalizing Africa. So wish we would get more from that author, and yes, I recommend Walker's work any day over Toni's tired, over-touted oeuvre.
 Not happy January 6, 2009
3 out of 5 found this review helpful
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.
 Overwhelming and Beautiful January 5, 2009
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
Let me preface this by saying that this is the first work of Toni Morrison's that I have read. Now I know that it will not be my last. It's nearing 3 AM where I am now, and I have just finished this overwhelming novel. I will make every effort to convey my thoughts coherently enough to do justice to this wonderful book.
I of course knew that Ms. Morrison's legacy as a giant of American literature included a history of notoriously difficult prose, and so I approached this novel with an admitted degree of apprehension. Yet, reading other reviewers who complain her style is unreadable, or negative reviews that admit the book was never even read, I'm convinced many readers are simply lazy. There are lines of this novel that demand to be reread and may seem foggy on first (or second) recitation, but their intention quickly becomes clear, and it really is not that difficult at all. You simply must pay attention to the often tricky usages of the English language. Ms. Morrison is not abusing syntax or words, she's playing with them. Another reviewer mentions a line that also stalled my attention on the first page, spoken by frequent narrator Florens: "...can you read? If a pea hen refuses to brood, I read it quickly and, sure enough, that night I see a minha mae standing hand in hand with her little boy, my shoes jamming the pockets of her apron."
That line perplexed me at first, but soon it became obvious. Ah, we're not using 'to read' in the sense of reading a book, but rather to read signs, to read omens. This opens the novel, and by the conclusion, we've come full circle and the symbolism of the hen that doesn't brood materializes in the spirit of Florens' mother ('minha mae' = 'my mother,' in Portuguese). This comes at the novel's heartbreaking climax, when you feel this young girl is just as much a part of you as she is of the pages. Read these opening pages closely. Everything returns.
While Florens is the only speaker of first person narration, there are many other stories and histories relayed throughout the course of this novel, made all the more impressive by its brevity.
In the video of Ms. Morrison speaking about her novel on this same page, she spoke of constructing it in the manner of an engine, and that while we receive respite from Florens' narrative to trace the roots of the novel's other characters, the train is still in motion. Her craftsmanship is impeccable. While reading Sorrow's story I felt a culminating angst while still wondering where Florens' unlawful travels would land her. That is the magic of this novel. All of the characters are so beautifully drawn, you feel genuine concern and emotion for all of them.
This novel is a marvelous achievement and I will be recommending it to many. It reminded me of why I first fell in love with reading. I have nothing left but Thank you, Toni Morrison. And Bravo.
Mercy, Mercy ME January 4, 2009
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
I am astounded by this woman's genius but I have to say the last few years she's slacked off (Love, Paradise). I like A MERCY but not with the passionate urgency I usually rip through a Morrison masterpiece.
So far on my Kindle, I've not been riveted.
That is until this afteroon.
This afternoon I started reading the very poetic memoir by Osama Bin laden's ex mistress Kola Boof (Diary of a Lost Girl) and it's so good I had to make myself take a break so I wouldn't read it all too quick. I'm like over half way done with it, darn it! But at least I finally have something on my Kindle that's heart-pulsing and gets the brain juices going. I didn't even know there was a Bin laden mistress let alone an African woman! Intriguing woman and a fascinating read.
I do wish Toni Morrison would do an autobiography or something different
for a change from the slave novels.
Simply Epic, Simply Morrison January 2, 2009
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
Five years after he last novel Love, Morrison returns to spin her magic in the novel A Mercy which only proves to be worth the wait. If you can keep up, that is.
The story opens up with a "confession" from the protagonist, a 16-year-old slave girl named Florens, with hands of a slave and feet of a Portuguese lady. She warns of a bloody story to be told as the reader muddles through what is admittedly a difficult narrator to follow. But Florens's present-tense stream of consciousness is easily overcome by the end of the story, as Morrison weaves in between voices and narratives: from Jacob, the hesitant master, to his religiously apathetic wife, as well as the servants, including Lina, rescued by the Puritans and then given to Jacob, and Sorrow, a arguably delusional character whose name matches how others perceive her. Each character is fully developed with their own heart-breaking story to tell on top of Florens's own story of abandonment, which is a highly resonant theme for discussion throughout the novel.
The most amazing part of Morrison's 167-page endeavor is perhaps its length--under 200 pages, a quick read compared to her previous books. Yet despite this, Morrison manages to create yet another masterpiece of epic proportions: her characters are richly drawn, her story is skillfully sewn together a la Faulkner, and most importantly, Morrison infuses the novel with a type of emotion rarely seen in books, past or present. One can't help but quote passages, think, and cry, at not only its depth, but simply because it is beautiful and poetic.
Morrison lives up to her expectations as a Nobel Prize winner, even though some might be lost in the multiples narratives as well as the constant change in voices. Yet in the hands of Toni Morrison, these traits become the treasure of her work. A Mercy is simply amazing, simply epic--just as we know Morrison to be--and simply must be read; it is one of the best novels, if not the best novel, of 2008.
|
|
|
