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| A Mercy | 
 enlarge | Author: Toni Morrison
Publisher: Knopf
Category: Book
List Price: $23.95
Buy New: $13.84
You Save: $10.11 (42%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  37 reviews
Sales Rank: 49
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1st
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 176
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 9.4 x 5.9 x 1
ISBN: 0307264238
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780307264237
ASIN: 0307264238
Publication Date: November 11, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Brand New, Perfect Condition, Please allow 4-14 business days for delivery. 100% Money Back Guarantee, Over 1,000,000 customers served.
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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.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 32 more reviews...
 A big zero January 7, 2009
I never received the book and aparently, alot of others have had the same problem. They have never responded to my email ither. Don't purchase products from them and I hope Amazon removes them from their site.
Pam Mettler
 Why I like Alice Walker so much more. January 7, 2009
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
A friend and I were talking a few months back about Madame Nobel Laureate, Toni, and why we both shake our heads at the dismissal of a truly brave artist such as Alice Walker. So what am I doing on this page other than I couldn't help but give this new, slender novel a read?(--which is exactly what I did over the holidays). My complaint with Toni is her almost obsessive exploration of the slave wound. That's the first thing. Not that I think this subject isn't worthy, it clearly is. But Morrison here is stretching things a bit in this attempt to give us verisimilitude a la late 17th century. The inner spectrum on these characters or at least, these attempts to give us such does not work here. It really seems to me that Ms. Morrison feels a sense of obligation, post-Nobel, to continue to explore this mighty subject and the story reads as if she were, indeed, under a set of self-imposed obligations to do so.
That's the problem in a nutshell.
Glad I read this, but cannot really recommend. And as far as Alice Walker goes, I commend that author for truly being an original artist and exploring edgy subjects--which is what a real artist is supposed to do! (ie: POSSESSING THE SECRET OF JOY) I also admire her artistic integrity in not sentimentalizing Africa. So wish we would get more from that author, and yes, I recommend Walker's work any day over Toni's tired, over-touted oeuvre.
 Not happy January 6, 2009
0 out of 4 found this review helpful
The story was excellent as the author style came shining through. However the book itself has uneven edges as though it was cut uneven, I have never had a book in this condition. Disappointed with the quality of pages.
 Overwhelming and Beautiful January 5, 2009
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
Let me preface this by saying that this is the first work of Toni Morrison's that I have read. Now I know that it will not be my last. It's nearing 3 AM where I am now, and I have just finished this overwhelming novel. I will make every effort to convey my thoughts coherently enough to do justice to this wonderful book.
I of course knew that Ms. Morrison's legacy as a giant of American literature included a history of notoriously difficult prose, and so I approached this novel with an admitted degree of apprehension. Yet, reading other reviewers who complain her style is unreadable, or negative reviews that admit the book was never even read, I'm convinced many readers are simply lazy. There are lines of this novel that demand to be reread and may seem foggy on first (or second) recitation, but their intention quickly becomes clear, and it really is not that difficult at all. You simply must pay attention to the often tricky usages of the English language. Ms. Morrison is not abusing syntax or words, she's playing with them. Another reviewer mentions a line that also stalled my attention on the first page, spoken by frequent narrator Florens: "...can you read? If a pea hen refuses to brood, I read it quickly and, sure enough, that night I see a minha mae standing hand in hand with her little boy, my shoes jamming the pockets of her apron."
That line perplexed me at first, but soon it became obvious. Ah, we're not using 'to read' in the sense of reading a book, but rather to read signs, to read omens. This opens the novel, and by the conclusion, we've come full circle and the symbolism of the hen that doesn't brood materializes in the spirit of Florens' mother ('minha mae' = 'my mother,' in Portuguese). This comes at the novel's heartbreaking climax, when you feel this young girl is just as much a part of you as she is of the pages. Read these opening pages closely. Everything returns.
While Florens is the only speaker of first person narration, there are many other stories and histories relayed throughout the course of this novel, made all the more impressive by its brevity.
In the video of Ms. Morrison speaking about her novel on this same page, she spoke of constructing it in the manner of an engine, and that while we receive respite from Florens' narrative to trace the roots of the novel's other characters, the train is still in motion. Her craftsmanship is impeccable. While reading Sorrow's story I felt a culminating angst while still wondering where Florens' unlawful travels would land her. That is the magic of this novel. All of the characters are so beautifully drawn, you feel genuine concern and emotion for all of them.
This novel is a marvelous achievement and I will be recommending it to many. It reminded me of why I first fell in love with reading. I have nothing left but Thank you, Toni Morrison. And Bravo.
Mercy, Mercy ME January 4, 2009
0 out of 3 found this review helpful
I am astounded by this woman's genius but I have to say the last few years she's slacked off (Love, Paradise). I like A MERCY but not with the passionate urgency I usually rip through a Morrison masterpiece.
So far on my Kindle, I've not been riveted.
That is until this afteroon.
This afternoon I started reading the very poetic memoir by Osama Bin laden's ex mistress Kola Boof (Diary of a Lost Girl) and it's so good I had to make myself take a break so I wouldn't read it all too quick. I'm like over half way done with it, darn it! But at least I finally have something on my Kindle that's heart-pulsing and gets the brain juices going. I didn't even know there was a Bin laden mistress let alone an African woman! Intriguing woman and a fascinating read.
I do wish Toni Morrison would do an autobiography or something different
for a change from the slave novels.
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