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A Mercy

by: Toni Morrison

: A Mercy
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780307264237
ISBN: 0307264238
Label: Knopf
Manufacturer: Knopf
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 176
Publication Date: November 11, 2008
Publisher: Knopf
Release Date: November 11, 2008
Sales Rank: 53
Studio: Knopf



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Editorial Review:

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

In the 1680s the slave trade was still in its infancy. In the Americas, virulent religious and class divisions, prejudice and oppression were rife, providing the fertile soil in which slavery and race hatred were planted and took root.

Jacob 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, “with the hands of a slave and the feet of a Portuguese lady.” Florens looks for love, first from Lina, an older servant woman at her new master’s house, but later from a handsome blacksmith, an African, never enslaved.

There are other voices: Lina, whose tribe was decimated by smallpox; their mistress, Rebekka, herself a victim of religious intolerance back in England; Sorrow, a strange girl who’s spent her early years at sea; and finally the devastating voice of Florens’ mother. These are all men and women inventing themselves in the wilderness.

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, and of a daughter who may never exorcise that abandonment.

Acts of mercy may have unforeseen consequences.



Customer Reviews
Average Rating: out of 5 stars

Rating: 1 out of 5 stars - A big zero
I never received the book and aparently, alot of others have had the same problem. They have never ... Read More


Rating: 2 out of 5 stars - Why I like Alice Walker so much more.
A friend and I were talking a few months back about Madame Nobel Laureate, Toni, and why we both ... Read More


Rating: 3 out of 5 stars - Not happy
The story was excellent as the author style came shining through. However the book itself has uneven ... Read More


Rating: 5 out of 5 stars - Overwhelming and Beautiful
Let me preface this by saying that this is the first work of Toni Morrison's that I have read. Now I ... Read More


Rating: 3 out of 5 stars - Mercy, Mercy ME
I am astounded by this woman's genius but I have to say the last few years she's slacked off (Love, Paradise). ... Read More

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Copyright ©2003, Mark Carey.