A Mercy

By Toni Morrison

A powerful tragedy distilled into a small masterpiece by the Nobel Prize-winning author of Beloved and, almost like a prelude to that story, set two centuries earlier.

Jacob is an Anglo-Dutch trader in 1680s United States, when the slave trade is still in its infancy. Reluctantly he takes a small slave girl in part payment from a plantation owner for a bad debt. Feeling rejected by her slave mother, 14-year-old Florens can read and write and might be useful on his farm. Florens looks for love, first from Lina, an older servant woman at her new master's house, but later from the handsome blacksmith, an African, never enslaved, who comes riding into their lives . . .

At the novel's heart, like Beloved, it is the ambivalent, disturbing story of a mother and a daughter – a mother who casts off her daughter in order to save her, and a daughter who may never exorcise that abandonment.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Aug 11, 2009
• ISBN: 9780307373076

Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison (1931–2019) was a Nobel Prize–winning American author, editor, and professor. Her contributions to the modern canon are numerous. Some of her acclaimed titles include: The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon, and Beloved, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1988. She won the 1993 Nobel Prize for Literature.

Reviews for A Mercy

[bnbooklady · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Morrison focuses the story around four women. Rebekka is white, the wife of Jacob Vaark, a landowner and trader who bought Lina, a Native American woman, to work as a servant for her. Despite their initial distrust and dislike of each other, Rebekka and Lina forge an unlikely partnership and quickly come to depend on each other. Out of kindness, Rebekka and her husband have taken in Sorrow, a poor black girl who has been raped and abused, and later Florens, the daughter of a slave, who comes into the master’s care when her mother begs him to take her daughter from their current master as payment for a debt.The narrative alternates between these characters without warning or notation and switches between first- and third-person perspectives. The action centers on Florens, who has left the farm on a mission to find the blacksmith, with whom she is in love, and who she believes can help cure the Mistress of illness she has fallen into. Morrison gives us chapters from Florens’s perspective, as she expresses her love and desire for the blacksmith and narrates her journey to find him, and I found those to be the most compelling parts of the book.Morrison also gives us Rebekka’s perspective and Lina’s point-of-view, both of which are interesting, but neither of which compares to the chapters on Sorrow, who, after giving birth, becomes Complete. Morrison’s use of symbolism and her trademark depth of meaning are at work in A Mercy, and she succeeds in telling a powerful story that at only 169 pages packs quite a punch.I am so in love with Morrison’s writing that I’m finding it difficult to summarize the plot of the book, so I’ll skip the full-length book review and simply say that this is a fantastic read and an excellent exploration of the issues of race, class, color, and gender that Morrison always consistently handles with insight, intelligence, and precision. Not a single word is wasted.Further discusson at The Book Lady's Blog.

[kylekatz · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A Mercy is a very fine book about colonial America told from many perspectives. The characters are; a white farmer and trader of goods; his mail-order bride from England; their servants, a Native American woman and a free, but severely traumatized African woman; and some hired black men, some indentured and one free, who come to work on their farm. The memories of many of these are explored and the way their stories intersect is shown from several angles. Lays bare the stark cruelty of slavery in many ways and the especial trials of women unprotected by men, as well as how infant mortality and smallpox affect this tiny community. Also how narrow religious beliefs, mixed with the superstitions of the time could have a pernicious, even fatal, influence on people. All this is accomplished through personal stories of characters who come alive in the pages of this thin book. Only 167 pages. Highly recommended.

[theeclecticreview · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This book was recommended as one of the 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die and it was a thought-provoking read from the perspective of slaves and slave owners in early Colonial America.

[copperskye · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A beautifully written, spare, almost poetic story of 17th century America.

[ma_washigeri · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I don't know how anyone can read Toni Morrison to analyse how she writes because her words sink me effortlessly into her world and I walk with her characters - no way to stand back. This book has an ever shifting voice as each person speaks. And while you can feel the distance of time in the voices, there is no distance in the relevance to today.

[sherton_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This book was recommended as one of the 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die and it was a thought-provoking read from the perspective of slaves and slave owners in early Colonial America.

[debs4jc · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Set in the colonial period, the story shifts from point of view to another and centers around a young slave girl who is sold--at the encouragement of her mother--to a settler. The mother encouraged this because she observed that the settler seemed to be a kind man, and indeed he does seem to treat the slave girl well. However as the reader sees in the lives of all the characters life on the frontier is harsh and life during those times was often marked with cruelty and injustice.This story was a slow read for me, the dialogue and the way the reader was thrown into the middle of it made it hard to figure out was was going on, especially at first. It does tackle some tough issues, which made a good book for discussion at our book group meeting but all of the members did struggle with actually reading it.

[crazy4reading · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This book is set in the 1680's around the slave trade. I found this book a little confusing at times. I couldn't figure out who was doing the talking or narrating at times. You have a mother who tries to save her daughter by selling her into slavery. The daughter has to try and deal with abandonment.The daughter is sold to Sir who owns a farm. She is not familiar with working on a farm and is not very useful at first. This was an okay book.

[janeajones · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Brilliant. Heart-breaking.

[limelite_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

(CD audiobook) Multiple points of view are flawlessly woven into a seamless imagining of early colonial American life when slaves and indentured servants far outnumbered free people in the southern colonies.Toni Morrison narrates her own novel in a unique and captivating style, giving her words weight with poetic tempo and pauses that lend an understated drama to the story, making it compelling and a bit hypnotic.Characters are easy to like, plot elements keep the action moving without being over-dramatic, and thematic development is masterful. You will walk away from this book knowing how slavery demeans everyone and makes all -- whether slave or not -- utterly dependent on each other. This interdependence may have the surface appearance of a family unit, but in a crisis, that pretense shatters to the detriment of all.There is every reason to recommend this novel, not the least of which is the narration, but also the beauty of restrained prose, and the care given to its historicity.

[anniels-2 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Expectedly lyrical

[oacevedo-792047 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Wow what a great book! I'm already thinking of re-reading it!

[bookwyrmm_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Very poetic look at a the beginning of America's troubled history.

[goofyocean110 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Fairly quickly on, I realized that really the strength of this book is in its character study. With that framework, I settled in to enjoy this. There is essentially no plot or action.The story is set in colonial Maryland and is about the people on a farmstead - the farmer/trader, his wife, an Indian servant, two female slaves, a black freedman blacksmith, and two white indentured servants. Through each of their viewpoints, we see how each are affected by the death of the farmer/trader and the sickness/recovery of his wife. We learn how they came to be on the farm, their roles, their relationships, their conditions, their aspirations, their betrayals.The most interesting things about the interview with Toni Morrison afterwards, I felt, was the theme of betrayal and how each character acted/reacted within the context of the options available - that none of them were particularly good or wicked people, but that each profoundly affected the life of the others.The story is beautifully told but somewhat hard to follow at times -- at least listening to. The narration abruptly switches between viewpoints and times. Though there is a clear and consistent 'I' and 'you', it is sometimes difficult to figure out which characters these are.It is, however, overall, an excellent narrative and characterization of what it was like to live in colonial Maryland, rich with detail and an exposition of the difficulties and potential futures of the various characters - each of which represent or illustrate various social classes/status. Morrison spent a good deal of effort and interest in the research, and it shows.

[mamashepp · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Truly a 3.5. Beautifully prose, vivid portrayal of early Colonial America. This is a story of slavery of all kinds, love and betrayal. Morrison tells the story through many different characters, primarily Florens, an African slave who tells her story from the first person and is talking to someone we can't immediately identify. The time and place jumping can be confusing.

[theaelizabet · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Through multiple characters and a variety of POVs, Morrison tells of the American colonies in the late 17th century before, as she explained in an interview, "slavery and black became married." Slavishness abounds in this colonial world; through ownership, indenture, arranged marriage; but also through fear, ignorance and religious zealotry. Reading this book is similar, I would imagine, to watching a great watercolorist work. The splotches of color are intriguing to watch as they are applied to the paper, but it might be awhile before you see the sense, beauty, or drama of the full piece. One particular character's brief rumination on the Book of Job--so simple, yet profound--is worth the price of the book.

[posthumose · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A seemingly short novel at 167 pages and narrated in lyrical language by several voices, A Mercy is in fact an intense and often internalized perspective on the effects of slavery on the human mind and heart. In colonial America of the late 1600s, life is harsh for most people and brutal for slaves. With disease, food shortages, and backbreaking work to contend with, the land is rugged and even the weather seems to conspire against you. Our story centers around Florens, a young slave girl who been accepted reluctantly by a Dutch landowner to pay off a debt owed him. He was offered her mother but the slave mother begged the man to take the daughter, thinking Florens would have a better life than with her own brutal, rapist master. Viewpoint shifts as chapters are spoken in different voices, including those of Lina, an old Indian woman whose tribe has been wiped out by smallpox. Sorrow, a lone shipwreck survivor, Rebekka, the childless landowner's wife and Florens mother will all have their say here too. Each will speak in their own voice, something Morrison accomplishes better than most, revealing more about themselves than observation or simple narration could tell us. Belonging is a strong thread throughout the story, being motherless and yearning for family and closeness, or being childless in the case of their mistress. Lina thinks of young Florens as "love-disabled" because of the way she tries to get close to her, and then to others, including a black freeman who rebuffs her for, among other things, having a slave mentality. There is so much here that the story seems almost condensed to me. This is not a fast read for most, the story should be read slowly, the language is rich, almost dense at times, and needs to be savoured. But what a powerful story it is. And what it leads us to is the realization that what to some may seem like an act of mercy may in fact feel like an act of abandonment.

[elizajane_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Reason for Reading: I am in the process of reading all the author's books. This is her latest as of July 2009.Comments: The time is 1680, the place is colonial America. This is the story of four women: Rebekka, an English girl sent to America as a wife whose family paid a monetary dowry; Florens, a black slave child (later woman) who is traded in exchange for partial payment of a debt; Sorrow, a European (Irish I find myself thinking for some reason) foundling coming to womanhood who is given as a gift to protect her from the growing boys in her current household; finally Lina, another child (later) woman who remembers vividly some small parts of her Native American life before she is sold and paid for. All these women belong to a man who doesn't believe in slavery, who despises those who does. He is a fairly decent, kind man but ultimately wants to have the riches of those he despises. But most of all, as the jacket flap states: "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 ..."The story is told in many voices: all the woman have their turn (some many times), the man behind the women and the farm hands. The story is told in a progressive forward movement but also slips into flashback scenes to give backgrounds to the characters. In such a short book, this becomes quite confusing at times. I spent a large majority of the time not knowing who was speaking until halfway through their narrative. Generally, I enjoy switching points of view and flashbacks but the book was just too short for me to get a grasp on anything really substantial. I must say for half the book I was under the impression Lina was a Native American and then I came to think she was African and I'm pretty sure she's Native, but I could be wrong... Needless to say, the book confounded me more than enlightened me in any way.I couldn't connect with any of the characters, nor did I really find the story emotionally charged which is something I've come to expect with Toni Morrison, from her books I've read so far. There is also a heavy theme of religious (namely Protestant) intolerance running through the book. First from a Dutch settler (Calvinist) towards Catholics in general, then Anabaptists causing grief in those other settlers who don't understand their ways and finally the term used becomes "the Protestants" (though I still think we are talking Anabaptists) as the slave people talk of how the Protestant's religion says that certain people such as savages (ie. blacks/natives, etc.) are not equal in God's eyes to them. This theme is pretty heavy handed throughout and I didn't know what to make of it. Does Morrison try to say slavery began with Anabaptist intolerance? Protestant intolerance? Christian? Religion, in general? I don't know anything about Anabaptists but when you get to broad terms such as Protestant or religious intolerance for each one intolerant person there are many good-hearted embracing people and I just don't buy into the "religion is the root of all evil" camp.A readable story but with each chapter change the figuring out of where you are and what's going on distracted me from enjoying the book as much as I could have otherwise. Fans, go ahead and read it, you may like it a lot more than I did. Never read Toni Morrison before? Don't start with this one.

[dylanwolf · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

As ever Toni Morrison chops backwards and forwards in time and swaps narrative voice so that you can not allow your concentration to waver if you are to enjoy her writing to the full. It is a luxury you should find time for. Morrison's prose is lush and consuming, her portrayal of place and time rich and satisfying. If I had a criticism (and who am I to criticize writing of this stature?) it is that I would love to read Morrison some other subject. I would love her to extend her fictional range a little. She is too good a writer to have only written about the experience of (black African women) in slavery however important and significant it is for her to have written all her dazzling and affecting novels.

[deesirings · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Morrison paints a vivid picture of her characters in this brief lyrical narrative. The theme that most emerges for me in this novel of slavery in 1690s America is one of violence, of physical beatings from all sorts of unexpected places, in addition to the kind of gruesomeness that one would expect in this setting. Women beat each other, a slave girl, enamored of a free man, beats his child. Though unexpected, these acts in are not inexplicable. Morrison conveys an empathy for each character's point of view and does so with a sparseness of words, a poetic concision that sketches the essence of everyone very quickly and has them come together, intertwined despite disparate backgrounds and circumstances. It is only in the final chapter that the title is explained, as the main character's mother explains her motivation in having asked that her daughter be taken from her -- it would characterize a mercy to send her off with a man who seemed to see her as the human child she was rather than as a vessel in which to enact perverse desire. Vulnerabilities, strife, motivation, connections, needs, all are exposed to make a little sense of the apparently incomprehensible acts of so many of the characters.

[mrstreme · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

"It was not a miracle. Bestowed by God. It was a mercy. Offered by a human." - page 195A Mercy has a quietness about it - as if each character is whispering a secret in my ear. But the message was strong, powerful and riveting. I haven't read a book quite like it before.The story centers on the trade of Florens, a literate slave girl who comes to the home of Jacob Vaark. Florens' mother insisted the girl be traded away from her, and as Florens settles into her new home, she ponders why her mother would be so willing to give her up. While at Jacob's home, Florens falls under the care of Lina, a Native American woman who tends to the farm and household. Also at the home are Sorrow, a supposedly dim-witted slave, and Rebekka, Jacob's wife.When Jacob dies unexpectedly, the entire structure of the home unravels, thread by thread. Rebekka is stricken with illness, Florens is dispatched to find help from her lover, Sorrow gives birth to a baby, and Lina can't function out of worry about Florens. Chapters are divided among the characters, adding new perspectives to the tragedy. The most telling chapter was the last, when Florens' mother told her side of the story.The plot doesn't move really, but as the story weaves in and out among the characters, you get a hard look at the effects of slavery in 1680's America. The moral of the story, though whispered, was still loud and clear: Slavery, in all forms, destroys lives.

[ocgreg34 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Florens is a young slavegirl in 1690's Virginia, sent by her ailing Mistress to find a young African blacksmith who cured another slavegirl of the pox. As she sets out on the difficult journey, her thoughts flow toward the blacksmith chronicling the hardships she faces to reach him: losing her Master's shoes, finding temporary shelter with religious zealots who take her for a demon, the cold nights, the possibility of capture as a runaway slave, the visions of her mother. She also recites her love for him, as a kind of mantra to keep her sane, to keep her going until she reaches him.Interspersed throughout her story, sixth other characters offer glimpses into Florens' life and into the New World: Jacob Vaark, a Dutch landowner who reluctantly accepts Florens in exchange for a debt owed by a Spaniard; Lina, the Native American woman who serves as Mistress' confidant and is in love with Florens; Sorrow, a slavegirl, possibly the only survivor of a shipwreck, who is still haunted by the passengers and her Twin; Rebekka Vaark, a strong woman whose spiritual beliefs are put to the test when she contracts the pox; Scully, an indentured slave who provides a remarkably clear view of each character in the novel; and finally Florens' mother who commits the ultimate sacrifice unbeknownst to her little girl.Each narrator suffers through some form of test, ultimately showing the resiliency of human nature. But how will Florens handle such tasks when she confronts them?Something I noticed is that each character sees the others at face value, but when given their chance to speak, what's seen on the outside doesn't necessarily reflect the true person, and with many surprises, I delighted in how each character shattered those pre-conceived notions. And, as an added "family" bonus, two of the characters also out themselves: Lina's affection for Florens is very quiet and secretive, but her jealousy flares at the first sight of the blacksmith; Scully, who openly confesses that he is attracted to men. To me, this also goes along with shattering the preconceptions because when discussing books or stories about slavery or the early days of the New World, sexuality almost seems a taboo subject, though it played a large role in how society operated at the time. (And still does.)A beautiful book, filled with many surprises and twists. And though it's only the second of Morrison's novels that I've read, this one adds her to my list of favorite authors.

[crazy4novels · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

After struggling through the first five pages of Toni Morrison's newest book, "A Mercy," I was faced with a decision: Should I continue to slog forward in the hope that it would all eventually make sense, or cut my losses and immediately toss the book into the return bin at my local library (there was, after all, a waiting list)? I have been burned by Ms. Morrison before. An octogenarian friend of mine presented me with a copy of "Beloved" several years ago. He plopped the recently purchased book into my lap and said, "I'm damned if I know what this woman is talking about. See if you can decode it, and call me later." I attributed his confusion to the effects of advancing age and attacked the book with confidence, only to find it as exhaustingly opaque as he had. I gave up after about one hundred pages."A Mercy" is a short book - about 170 compact pages, and I decided to stay the course. I'm glad I did. Ms. Morrison's language shifts from an elliptical stream-of-consciousness exercise in the first chapter to an intelligible and poetic narrative that sweeps the reader into the beauty and tragedy of 17th century America before it was America. Her ensuing prose combines a mystical, dreamlike quality with a razor sharp conveyance of nature's immediacy. Morrison leads her reader into a world that is at once mythic and yet acutely real, a literary version of Bierstadt's wilderness paintings.The quest for belonging, the desire to forge a circle of interconnection between human and human, is a central theme of the book. Almost everyone is an orphan of some sort. Jacob Vaark has scraped his fortune together in the New World by employing the energy and wiles that enabled him to survive as a solitary street urchin in Europe. His wife, Rebekka, was shipped across the ocean to Jacob, sight unseen, by her father, who was only too glad to reduce his familial burden by one hungry 16-year old. Lina, Rebekka's Native American housemaid and farmworker, has lost her entire village to smallpox. Sorrow, an African orphan, has been taken in by Vaark after her rescue, half drowned, from a nearby river estuary. Florens, the main character of the story, has found her way into Vaark's household by default, having been accepted by Vaarck as "payment" for a Virginia slave trader's debt, but only after Floren's mother (the originally intended "payment") begged him to do so.The motherless, disconnected state of Morrison's characters is made more poignant by the boundless wilderness that they inhabit. Breathtaking, seemingly endless, impersonal in its beauty and in its cruelty, the New World itself is a character in the book. Awe inspiring and yet merciless, nature has a leveling effect on social stratification when survival is at stake. Smallpox, malnutrition, an unfortunate fall that breaks a leg -- such misfortunes are no respecter of class or legal status. People live or die as a group, and the women on Vaark's failing farm form a friendship of sorts as they realize that coordinated effort from dawn until dusk is necessary in order to prevent nature from reclaiming their fragile foothold on the land.Lina, Sorrow, and Florens, however, are fully aware that their cobbled-together coexistence is no substitute for social equality and the right to seek and maintain the bonds of family, a goal that each of them hungers for in her own way. The story has twists and turns that I won't reveal here, but it is safe to say that slavery's devastating effects on the human psyche run through the book and Vaarck's wilderness like a tainted river. The hopelessness and humiliation that accompany Floren's loss of control over her own body and destiny are tragedies that are compounded by her unconscious internalization of slavery itself. A free black ironworker rebuffs Florens' advances with a stinging rebuke: he wants her to go because she is a slave. When Florens responds, as if slapped, "What is your meaning? I am a slave because Sir trades for me," he replies: "No. You have become one. . . Your head is empty and your body is wild . . . Own yourself, woman, and leave us be."Each side of the ornate iron gate that Jacob has commissioned the black journeyman to fashion for Jacob's newly completed mansion is topped by the image of a writhing serpent. When closed, the two serpent heads merge to form a flower blossom. Is nature the serpent that must be tamed in Vaarck's garden, or is man the serpent in the New World's Eden? Morrison invites you ponder this and other questions as you immerse yourself in this satisfying 2-night read.

[pinkcrayon99 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Toni really accomplished the racial ambiguity she has been striving to achieve in her work with this novel. This characters in this book were so complex and compelling, classic Toni. The ending brought me to tears...the last sentence summed up the entire book.

[vtmom13 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I have one small complant, I never felt that any of the charictors were developed. Great story just felt that it could have been twice as long so the whole story could have been told instead of just part.

[sharonlflynn_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A very beautifully written novel, set in 17th century America. The story is told from the points of view of many participants and observers, each with their own voice and context. It is a short novel, but it says a lot.

[lauralkeet · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

One afternoon a few months ago, I was sentenced to that purgatory that is a 2-hour drive on the New Jersey Turnpike. But then my spirits were lifted heavenwards by a National Public Radio interview with Toni Morrison. Ms. Morrison discussed her new book, A Mercy, and rewarded her audience with a reading. Sheer bliss. I knew I had to read this book!My, oh my, oh my. Morrison packed so much richness into this short novel. The richness is centered around a tiny bit of storyline, in which Florens, a slave girl, is sent on an errand to get help for her seriously ill mistress. But there's so much more in the stories of each character, told in their own voices: Jacob and Rebekka, the sadly childless European landowners; Florens, who was sold away from her mother to repay a debt; Lina and Sorrow, women who came to the farm via slave ship; Willard and Scully, the white indentured servants; and the blacksmith, a nameless free African who captured Florens' heart. I found myself enveloped in Morrison's prose, savoring every word, as with this description of an Atlantic crossing: Women of and for men, in those few moments they were neither. And when finally the lamp died, swaddling them in black, for a long time, oblivious to the footsteps above them, or the lowing behind them, they did not stir. For them, unable to see the sky, time became simply the running sea, unmarked, eternal, and of no matter. (p. 85)This is a wonderful, moving, haunting book. Highly recommended.

[bhowell_35 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I was priveleged to have received this book from Early Reviewers, a new novel from one of America's greatest contemporary writers. I read it in a day and upon reflection, that was best because I was immersed in the lyrical haunting prose and the voices telling the story never seemed disjointed or confusing. They were a coherent chorus of the inner lives of five women and their heartbreaking outer lives in the harsh world of the Americas in the late 17th century. Slavery, racial hatred and religious intolerance abound but at heart this is a story of a mother who casts off her daughter perhaps to save her or as it appeared to the daughter, Florens, to save her baby brother. As in "The Bluest Eye" the daughter yearns for her mother's love and despite other hardships never reconciles herself to the loss of that primary attachment which should have been hers as of right. In "The Bluest Eye"a daughter yearns for the love and attention she sees her mother lavish on the white children of her mother's employer. In "Beloved" there is a different kind of casting off by a mother in order to save her daughter. The abandonment defines the existence of both mother and daughter. Is it true after all, that the only true love is between mother and daughter? No one loves with the strength of a mother and none but a daughter can ever appreciate or understand that attachment and hense truly mourn it's loss. The mother of Florens speaks of her act as a mercy though Florens will never know or understand that, just as the baby daughter in "Beloved" will never know or understand that her mother cut her throat to save her life. Florens' mother speaks of her 'mercy'"One chance, I thought. There is no protection but there is difference. ...I said you. Take you, my daughter. Because I saw the tall man see you as a human child, not pieces of eight. I knelt before him. Hoping for a miracle . He said yes....I stayed on my knees. In the dust where my heart will remain each night and every day until you understand what I know and long to tell you: 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.Oh Florens. My love. Hear a tua mae."

[tea58 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The title of Toni Morrison's new book, "A Mercy" makes me tremble and my arms get goose pimples. Amazing the way she can put one word or two words together making my emotions go all jittery with delight or sadness. I am always in for a bittersweet treat with any words Toni Morrison chooses to write down and publish as a book."In "A Mercy" there are people who have known what it's like not to be loved and those who have known love. There is Sir, Rebekkah, Lina, Florens, Sorrow, Twin, the freed blacksmith and more characters. Each character's life is a memorable story, a book in itself. In the Seventeenth century religion was around every corner: Baptists, Anabaptists, Separatists, Presbyterians, Catholics and Protestants and also the secret, foreign gods of the slaves. With all this religion, there is also deep hatred, feelings of superiority and greed. These feelings lead to evil bartering for flesh. Other time these other emotions lead to a clinging together becoming as one like in a marriage until each person gains the strength to survive in this new world.Jacob Vaark is one of the few men who hates the selling of human flesh like chattel. His presence gave me a sense of safe relief. His death made me sad. Born a orphan he sympathized with other needy human beings no matter the color. Perhaps, it's his lack of a real home that leads him to build more than one home for himself looking for a spiritual security. Looking for a place where he can give and receive love.I favored some characters in "A Mercy." I favored Sorrow. Her life is the one I will remember. Sorrow changes her name after the birth of a daughter. She changes her name to Complete. Wow! That was so powerful for me. I can't tell the story here without spoiling it. At the end of the book I felt complete. I had also witnessed A Mercy. I feel honored just trying to write a review of Toni Morrison's book. The book, the plot is swollen with wisdom and beauty. I remember the words "motherlove." Oh, how can I stop sharing this book? With Toni Morrison book, there isn't an ending. There is just a resting place. Her book "A Mercy" is as refreshing as water from a rolling brook in the mountains. Thank you Toni Morrison. May you live a long life always with a pen and paper nearby.

[heathereb_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A powerful story, cleverly written in a number of different voices portraying the lives of seventeenth century slaves. Morrison has a real connection with the lives of these people in her ability o get inside their skins, and speak with their voices.