A Mercy

Like many Americans, I was first introduced to the work of Toni Morrison during my freshman year of college, when I read THE BLUEST EYE as part of a literature survey course. I moved on to several more of her books --- BELOVED, SONG OF SOLOMON, TAR BABY --- in English and women's studies courses, and have read all her other novels published since, continuing to marvel at her penetrating insights into race, sex and American history. THE BLUEST EYE, her debut, continues to be the one most often taught in college, probably because it's her shortest and most accessible. That is, until now. Morrison's new book, A MERCY, is perhaps the perfect introduction to this Nobel Prize-winning author's work, offering readers, in fewer than 175 pages, a glimpse into her powerful literary style and keen insights into issues of race, violence, sex, history, identity and community that also demonstrates her brilliance and maturity as a writer. The America that Morrison shows readers in A MERCY is one in its infancy, one in which "states" were hardly united, when differences of background, religion and ideology marked provincial boundaries as stark as any political border. Set in the 1680s and 1690s, it portrays a region in search of an identity, one in which the definitions of "free" and "slave" are both nebulous and shifting. At the center of the novel is the household of Jacob Vaark. Vaark, like almost everyone in the colony, is an immigrant, a businessman who lives somewhere in the North but enters into slaveholding --- and the social grasping that seems to accompany it --- almost by accident. He obtains his first slave --- a Native American woman named Lina, whose village has been destroyed by smallpox and whose reputation has been destroyed after a rape --- to be company for his mail-order wife, Rebekka. Eventually, the two women, who develop a close friendship, are joined by another, deeply troubled slave known only as Sorrow. Finally, the object of the "mercy" of the novel's title is Florens, bought for the Vaark household as a young girl at the entreaty of her mother. As Vaark travels on business and, later, as he becomes obsessed with building a grand home, the women form a family of sorts. After Vaark's death and Rebekka's subsequent illness, however, they discover just how fragile their bonds are, how fragmented their identities. Vaark's household is something of a microcosm of the nascent country. Besides demonstrating the splintered identities of various American ethnic groups (and even of some individuals), the stories that make up the novel illustrate starkly and powerfully the legacy of violence, betrayal and inhumanity that is part of our nation's heritage. In particular, Morrison illustrates starkly and powerfully the ways in which slavery, in all its forms, robs people of their essential humanity and promotes the kind of "wilderness" that leads to violence, shame and despair. Readers will come away from A MERCY feeling that they understand n

Toni Morrison has once again created a work of gorgeous, delicate beauty. A Mercy is told from the perspective of a new World farmer in 1690, Jacob Vaark, his wife, and their slaves and indentured workers. Each of them has in some way been set adrift at some time in their lives. There is a sense that a good community has been built among them, in a way. But it is really just a thin illusion, since Jacob's death displays all too well the dependence on his mercy. Women, women of color, poor men, all of them are powerless. And the point of the book is spelled out well with a commentary about the kinds of slavery we set for ourselves. This is a wonderful book that sets one to thinking about the consequences of acts of mercy and the sometimes hidden motives behind those acts. Dr. Morrison continues to write beautiful books that nonetheless make one take a hard look at both history and the human heart.

In this short, lyrical and gripping novel, Tony Morrison has undertaken, once again, to explore her favorite subject: the evils of slavery. Written in prose so lovely and mesmerizing that it reminded me of her "Sula", also a short novel, published thirty-five years ago, "A Mercy" was a great joy to read. Jacob Vaark, a Dutch-born farmer and trader, and Rebekka, his English wife own a tobacco plantation. Even though Jacob owned a few slaves, he did so only as a necessity to run his homestead. Jacob is sympathetic towards orphans and waifs because he himself was parentless at a young age, and had to fend for himself on the streets running small errands. At the heart of the novel is an act of mercy. When Jacob Vaark travels to Maryland to collect debt from a tobacco plantaion owner named Senor D'Ortega, he finds out that Senor is broke and has no money to pay off the debt. Senor offers Jacob a thin black girl named Florens, a daughter of one of his slaves, as a partial payment of the debt. Florens is smart, and she can read and write also. Florens' mother senses that Jacob is more kind-hearted than her master, and so pleads with Senor to give Florens to Jacob. Her hope is that Florens would have a better life in Jacob's estate. Florens's mother considers this an act of mercy, but the irony is that Florence considers it abandonment. Several sympathetic characters make the novel interesting and hold a reader's attention. Lina (Messalina), a native American, was sold to Jacob by the Presbytarians who had rescued and saved her. Sorrow, a sea captain's daughter, survives a ship wreck, but ends up in Jacob's plantation as a slave. Willard and Scully are indentured servants who are sent to work at Jacob's plantation by their contract holders. A young black man, a blacksmith, arrives to make an iron gate for Jacob's new house. He is not a slave, but a free man. This man is also knowledgeable about medicinal herbs. Florens falls in love with him. In this novel Toni Morrison has found her ability to write simple, unadorned and lyrical prose that she mysteriously lost when she wrote "Paradise": "A frightened, long-necked child who did not speak for weeks but when she did, her light, singsong voice was lovely to hear. Some how, some way, the child assuaged the tiny yet eternal yearning for the home Lina once knew, where everyone had anything, and no one had everything." Reading this novel was an intense, deeply moving, and satisfying experience. Even though the novel is short, it is bright, deep and weighty.

In her latest novel Toni Morrison takes us back to the late 17th century America. The plot gives her an opportunity to present America in the making, there is no US yet, there are colonies, each somewhat different in their culture, religion or attitude to slavery. Sending her characters on distant voyages Morrison adroitly shapes the plot in such a way as to give the reader at least an impression of the variety that America once was. The differences between people and places are the most clearly visible in the opposition between Maryland and New York yet the choice of characters also helps Morrison to stress the diversity of American roots. And yet "A Mercy" is not just a historical novel. The setting is important but Morrison is much more interested in her characters presented in the novel with depth and insight. This concentration is reflected in the form of the book - we get to know about the events from the characters in a series of monologues which culminate in the final monologue of Florens' mother which ties some of the book's loose ends and answers some of its haunting questions. Each of the monologues comes from a completely different character - a slave, a native American, a Dutch etc. - this variety is almost incredible but serves to add a depth to the book, broadens the view the reader gets. As usual in Morrison's fiction the characters are mostly women. As a result the book to some degree fails as a HIStory book, it is much more of a HERstory book, offering the reader a selection of points of view usually missing in more traditional history writing both fictional and scholarly. In short: another great book from a Nobel-prize winning novelist.

(4.5 stars) Continuing themes that she has been developing since the start of her career, Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison creates an intense and involving philosophical, Biblical, and feminist novel set in the Atlantic colonies between 1682 and 1690. Her impressionistic story traces slavery from its early roots, using unique voices--African, Native American, and white--while moving back and forth in time. The primary speaker is Florens, a 16-year-old African slave, who tells the reader at the outset that this is a confession, "full of curiosities," and that she has committed a bloody, once-in-a-lifetime crime. In a flashback to 1682, we learn that when Florens was only eight years old, her mother suggested to the Maryland planter who owned the family, that Florens be given to New York farmer Jacob Vaark to settle a debt. Florens never understands why she was abandoned by her mother. Florens lives and works for the next eight years on Vaark's rural New York farm. Lina, a Native American, who works with her, tells in a parallel narrative how she became one of a handful of survivors of a plague that killed her tribe. Vaark's wife Rebekkah describes leaving England for New York to be married to a man she has never seen. The deaths of their subsequent children are devastating, and Vaark is hoping that eight-year-old Florens will help alleviate Rebekkah's loneliness. Vaark, himself an orphan and poorhouse survivor, describes his journeys from New York to Maryland and Virginia, commenting on the role of religion in the culture of the different colonies, along with their attitudes toward slavery. All these characters are bereft of their roots, struggling to survive in an alien environment filled with danger and disease. When smallpox threatens Rebekkah's life in 1692, Florens, now sixteen, is sent to find a black freedman who has some knowledge of herbal medicines. Her journey is dangerous, ultimately proving to be the turning point in her life. Morrison examines the roots of racism going back to slavery's earliest days, providing glimpses of the various religious practices of the time, and showing how all the women are victimized. They are "of and for men," people who "never shape the world, The world shapes us." As the women journey toward self-enlightenment, Morrison describes their progress in often Biblical cadences, and by the end of this novel, the reader understands what "a mercy" really means. An intense and thought-provoking look at various forms of slavery from their beginnings, this short novel has an epic scope, one which admirers of Morrison will celebrate for its intense thematic development, even as they may somewhat regret its sacrifice of fully developed characters. Mary Whipple Sula Beloved Jazz Song of Solomon (Oprah's Book Club) Love: A Novel Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination