Book Review: A Mercy

(Taken out of the Jackson Heights Library) Read right after Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye which was written at the beginning of her career. A Mercy was one of her later efforts. In this short novel, the language is just as deep and the narrative is more complex. Set in the late 1690s in the Maryland and Virginia colonies where slavery has recently taken root, A Mercy follows how the evils of that practice twist and warp both the victims and the masters.  

After a confusing first chapter, it took a while to figure out what was going on. But I gradually pieced together the main plot. After the master has died of the pox and his wife is at death's door, the slave Florens has been sent to fetch the blacksmith, a free black man with medicinal knowledge to save the mistress. Tending her is Lena, a Native woman and main servant, and the girl Sorrow. Florens is in love with the blacksmith and may or may not return to her mistress's home. 

Like Faulkner's Sound and the Fury, different characters narrate each chapter in their particular distinctive voices as the story goes back and forth in time. We get all the women of the house, the master, two male indentured servants, and finally Florsens' mother each expressing their dreams and passions under the yoke of slavery.

Morrison examines how each character is effected by their harsh environment and the cruel slavery system. Like the heroine of Beloved, Florens is driven to violence by her oppression. The writing is a little dense, but very powerful and poetic.