A Mercy

By: Toni Morrison

Narrated by: Toni Morrison

Length: 6 hrs and 26 mins

Publisher's summary

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.

©2008 Toni Morrison (P)2008 Random House Audio

Absolutely LOVED this!!

Would you listen to A Mercy again? Why?

I will definitely listen to this again. I loved everything about it...and hated when it was done.

What did you like best about this story?

I felt connected and invested emotionally in the characters and their lives. I could "see" these people as I listened.

What about Toni Morrison’s performance did you like?

Her voice is captivating...I suppose her being the author allowed for the telling of the story the way she intended as opposed to how another narrator would have interpreted it. The emotion and passion of what she wanted to portray were felt.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

I actually did complete all of the book minus about 45 mins in one sitting. It was truly that good!

Any additional comments?

I love Toni Morrison's work. This was the first time I've listened to a book and now I cannot wait to listen to her "Beloved" even though I've read it twice already!

Excellent story

The beginning was slow listening, then progressed as a great story. Really enjoyed the analysis at the end.

Difficult story to follow. Enjoyed TM nterview.

I found it a difficult story to follow as there were
many references to the characters previous lives Intertwined with the more current accounts of that period. Thus requiring this reader to review many chapters/ passages to get a clearer picture of the story.

Amazing story

Historically accurate, engrossing tale of North American immigrants before the revolutionary war. The interview with Toni Morrison at the end was especially good.

Masterful folklore inculcation and empathy shared

Nearly a year after my soulmate's rest, A Mercy is approved for CAW-tM.

The betrayals of women to become mothers and of the men who revered them are uniquely inherent emnities bonded since the dawn of Creation.

The story of Jakob and Rebecca Vaark relates so much to the Christian storylines of Creation regarding Adam's walk with his god (Jakob with the blacksmith) and Yaashra'al's relationship with his mother impacting his stewardship towards his wives and possessions (Sir Vaark's adventures on his day job, managing the liquidity of gentry like Senyor's; the trips to the saloons; the introduction to an arranged marriage to Rebecca)

My zeal for A Mercy zeniths in Flourence physical trek to save the life of Mistress Rebecca, in finding the smithee. This trek and the character taking it reminds me of a struggle I face with everyday with mortality and with those few who depend on me frequently from a foreground aspect. I find that I need a holding down and tussle with an angel, like the blacksmith, to not only keep from pleasing folk at my expense, but to seek from our Creator the blessings he uniquely has for me.

A hero saves those in distress, not only from the dangers around them, if not those ones depreciated in distress. The common sense adage, "God helps those who help themselves," isn't in the Bible, and this adage isn't accurate by one word, "themselves." The reasoning is this: "must a gambler sell all his possessions to risk for earning more. How happy will that person be if he wins it all, and lose his soul?" For a protagonist caricature like Jakob Vaark, the hero risks his life to teach the underprivileged of society how to read and gives values to their lives, yet he cannot save his own life.

A hero is one whom God helps to help others. Why otherwise would Jesus willfully allow others to nail him to a tree to die? He will die to resurrect Senyora Morrison, if she allowed him to dine with her despite what her family may think.

I had to buy the book!

I hadn't finished listening to Ms Morrison narrate her book when I ordered it from Amazon.com. When the book arrived, I read along as Ms Morrison narrated it. Her reading cadence exposes subtleties that I would have missed had I read the story to myself. A Mercy sheds light on our dark history. It also leaves me puzzled about some things. A tremendous amount of research went into writing A Mercy. It is not a off-the-top-of-one's-head novel. I will do some research myself and then read the book again. Oh, and not all indentured people were black. NOTE: A very informative interview follows the narration of this book.

Captivating use of language.

A brilliant telling of a story from a perspective not often imagined, considered, or explored.

Mercy

Thanks Toni. This is a great novel. The interview was also informative. I thoroughly enjoyed this audible.

Toni Morrison

What a gift to have Toni Morrison read her exquisite novel, and to have the pleasure of an interview in addition. How gracious she is as an interviewee, especially given how much of it she must have to do on book tours and so on.

Don't miss this! And even if you've read Beloved on the page, do consider listening to Morrison read that, too.

Listening was a challenge

Sorry, I love Toni Morrison's writing, and she has a lovely rich voice, but her pauses are as regular as a slow ticking clock no matter how long the sentence or how varied its structure. I found myself predicting each pause, which made listening to the story less than optimum, tedious, in fact. I have the same opinion of the spoken version of Beloved, one of my favorite books. Please, Ms. Morrison, your novels deserve professional readers.