Describe Books Toward A Mercy
| Original Title: | A Mercy |
| ISBN: | 0307264238 (ISBN13: 9780307264237) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Literary Awards: | Orange Prize Nominee for Fiction Longlist (2009), James Tait Black Memorial Prize Nominee for Fiction (2008), The Rooster -- The Morning News Tournament of Books (2009) |
Toni Morrison
Hardcover | Pages: 167 pages Rating: 3.7 | 20049 Users | 2708 Reviews
Specify Containing Books A Mercy
| Title | : | A Mercy |
| Author | : | Toni Morrison |
| Book Format | : | Hardcover |
| Book Edition | : | Special Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 167 pages |
| Published | : | November 11th 2008 by Knopf Publishing Group (first published 2008) |
| Categories | : | Fiction. Historical. Historical Fiction. Cultural. African American |
Chronicle In Pursuance Of Books A Mercy
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.
A Mercy reveals what lies beneath the surface of slavery. But at its 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.
Rating Containing Books A Mercy
Ratings: 3.7 From 20049 Users | 2708 ReviewsAssessment Containing Books A Mercy
Yes, I am a Toni Morrison fan and believe she is incapable of writing a bad book, but that doesn't mean I wasn't ready to be critical of her new book if necessary. It's not necessary. The beginning may seem slow (that never bothers me) as we are thrust into a world that is faraway in time, but real. Historical details never bog down; they are worn lightly, as a reviewer put it.Reviewers have compared one character here to Sethe from Beloved; and though I see the parallel, this is a very
Dear Ms. Morrison:I just want you to know that I think you are a wonderful writer. I remember picking up a copy of The Bluest Eye back in 1990 because I was taking a stupid college course and we were required to read a book by a female author written after WWII. I chose your book because it was really short and I didn't want to put a lot of time into that assignment. I remember crying while reading it and wanting to take that little girl out of her miserable life and make her feel better about
This was definitely not one of my favorites. I am usually a die-hard Morrison fan, but this one just wasn't up to par with her earlier works. Many people have compared this to Beloved, but I find that comparison unjust. This book, while it had its moments of brilliance, was inundated with dense, incomprehensible prose. At times, I was unable to decipher who was speaking and when. It just wasn't a good read for me.
[8/10]What a beautifully heart-breaking book. It's a bit disorienting, jumping around from different characters' perspectives, and told in different writing styles. But I think that lends itself to the sort of medley of pain and struggle and sorrow these characters' face. Each has their own story to tell about loss, about displacement and about learning to live through it as best they can. And Morrison excellently captures those feelings without every feeling didactic. They are richly crafted
So this isn't as overtly horrifying as other Morrison novels. With a theme of slavery, one rape implied and a second alluded to, and a late-game breakdown, this statement has more to do with how immensely fucked-up your average Toni Morrison novel is than anything else, but when you consider that other Morrison novels have featured parasitic ghosts, drowned children, murder cults and massacres, the bar for violence and mind games is high in Morrison and A Mercy might not seem to meet the bar.
From my youngest sister, who reads often and prefers "Austenish" lit: "It was confusing and hard to get into and I didn't like the ending, but I did like that we heard every person's side of events. I still like my picks "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" and "The Guernsey Potato Peel Pie Society" best."From my middle sister, who is not a big reader and likes "family smut" (aka divorcee single mother who has had it hard and then finds love in the shape of a Tarzan woodsman living alone and horny in the
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