A Mercy
Nov 2008 · Sold by Vintage
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29 reviews
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About this ebook
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The acclaimed Nobel Prize winner reveals what lies beneath the surface of slavery. But at its heart, like Beloved, it is the 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.
One of the New York Times’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century
“Spellbinding. . . . Dazzling. . . . [A Mercy] stands alongside Beloved as a unique triumph.” —The Washington Post Book World
In the 1680s the slave trade in the Americas is still in its infancy. Jacob Vaark 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, who can read and write and might be useful on his farm. Rejected by her mother, Florens looks for love, first from Lina, an older servant woman at her new master's house, and later from the handsome blacksmith, an African, never enslaved, who comes riding into their lives.
One of the New York Times’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century
“Spellbinding. . . . Dazzling. . . . [A Mercy] stands alongside Beloved as a unique triumph.” —The Washington Post Book World
In the 1680s the slave trade in the Americas is still in its infancy. Jacob Vaark 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, who can read and write and might be useful on his farm. Rejected by her mother, Florens looks for love, first from Lina, an older servant woman at her new master's house, and later from the handsome blacksmith, an African, never enslaved, who comes riding into their lives.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The acclaimed Nobel Prize winner reveals what lies beneath the surface of slavery. But at its heart, like Beloved, it is the 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.
On...
Ratings and reviews
29 reviews
John Marshall
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January 8, 2025
Although Florens is clearly the main character, the book oscillates from the point of view of other characters. Morrison provides a cold and clear look at sexism, racism, and early American religion. Her ability to create a world (the homestead of Vaark and his wife) inside a world of savagery, greed, and death is remarkable. The characters that live in this world are all fragile and have personal and private loads that make them complex and relatable. Morrison, as only she can, tackles sexism in a way that pulls the reader towards introspection and inquiry. A Mercy is dark, beautiful, and exhilarating read.
A Google user
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March 4, 2009
This is an outstanding book that melds the stories of men and women, free and enslaved, whose lives intersect on a daily basis. You do have to pay particular attention in the beginning to pick up the stream-of-consciousness trains of thought.
A Google user
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October 15, 2010
Beautifully written but sometimes it skips around too much to keep ones attention. On Kindle 10/13/10
About the author
Toni Morrison is the author of eleven novels, from The Bluest Eye (1970) to God Help the Child (2015). She received the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Pulitzer Prize, and in 1993 she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. She died in 2019.
Toni Morrison is the author of eleven novels, from The Bluest Eye (1970) to God Help the Child (2015). She received the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Pulitzer Prize, and in 1993 she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. She died in 2019.
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