Comment

May 01, 2018RogerDeBlanck rated this title 4 out of 5 stars
Morrison's ninth novel A Mercy is as poetic as it can be elusive. The narrative structure relies partly on an assemblage of voices. We hear the heartbreaking remembrances and yearnings of each of the story's victimized women: Lina, Sorrow, Florens, and Florens's mother called "a minha mae." At the outset of the story, it is the late 17th century and Jacob Vaark, an orphan of English and Dutch descent, inherits land in the new American colonies and sets out to collect a debt on a parcel of his land on a Maryland estate. As compensation, the Maryland slaveowner offers Florens's mother and baby brother. In an act of "a mercy" to save Florens from the horrors of a cruel master, Florens's mother begs for Vaark, who she can see is a good man, to take Florens instead. Against his will to take on another slave, he does anyways and so Florens joins Lina and Sorrow on Vaark's plantation. This begins the multi-faceted narrative of voices. We learn the harrowing pasts of each woman and what they've suffered and endured. Among this sadness is the Mistress of the plantation, Vaark's wife Rebekka. She too suffers from many grave losses. At the center of all the pain is Florens's obsession with a young Black man who is also free. As a skilled blacksmith, he is hired by Vaark to do intricate ironwork for Vaark's new mansion. What will happen to Florens? What will happen to them all? A Mercy maneuvers back and forth in time, revealing its secrets slowly and in meticulous details. This is a work of prose that is essentially poetry, where its gorgeous language and heartrending voices become a symphony cascading with a lyricism that is hypnotic and mesmerizing.