Customer Reviews
Admirable and mysterious - By: Jacques COULARDEAU, 17 Dec 2008 
A small book by a rare writer, & yet a mysterious book because it is difficult to know & understand what the author wants to say, what's more prove with her story. Toni Morrison takes us to the end of the seventeenth century & confronts us to three generations of black Africans facing slavery. The first generation is a woman brought from Africa & experiencing the passage to America & then being a slave. She is accepting her position, the fact that she is a woman & hence a reproducing machine for all men around. But Toni Morrison makes her a fetishist of shoes, just as if she kept some kind of sanity & identityin the fact that she takes shoes from Europeans & wears them, no matter whether they are too big or just inadequate. This mother will offer her own daughter to some white man who has come to make the woman's owner pay a debt he has contracted & does not want to pay, & her offer is determined because her owner does not want her to go & she does not want to move to a new situation. Stability seems to be a desire to be satisfied at any price, & her own daughter does not seem to be important for her because she did not want herin the first place. It was more or less imposed onto her. That second generation is dissatisfiedin the same way, submissive but with a deep & high level of anger & maybe hatred. And she turns from pure submission to rebellion because the man she gave herself to, a black smithy, turns violent when she by accident mistreat the young boy he has adopted. It is irrational & yet perfectly understandable. The girl wants some affective stability, especially from a black man, black like her, & she does not realize that she had been violent with the little boy out of some kind of jealousy. The third generation is just an infant who is seen as an animal by the whites, the masters, & yet an infant, a child by the mother. The book seems to identify these unbalanced & deregulated personalities to the trauma of the passage from Africa to America, from freedom to slavery & their incapability to die before the end of the passage. A trauma leading to a morbid desire to die that is not satisfied & then is turned into a morbid acceptance of slavery & some kind of eternal hatred against the world & life. At the same time Toni Morrison shows how some white people are also heldin servitude for any reason imaginable & how their limited indenture is lengthened at will & for any cause imaginable too, but they keep the hope to be free one day, the hope & the certainty too that makes them keep some humanity, whereas the blacks do not retain that hope & that human level of existence. It is thus a very sad book because there is no hope, no hope for a future of freedom because there is no way to ever earn, deserve & win that freedom. The book is also sad because that's the very stake of the present situation. Can African Americans finally come out of that traumatic past & become full time & fully fledged Americans, today with a black President elect, & future President? The book seems to turn this traumatic past into an inescapable lot, destiny, curse that will live forever & ever,in spite of the kind words from a Catholic priest who clearly says the future of freedom isin an afterlifein which you must believe, like it or not. That religious preaching diabolically reinforces the fate of slavery.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, Université Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne, Université Paris dauphine, Université Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines.
Journey into American Past to Understand American Present - By: Ford Ka, 11 Nov 2008 In her latest novel Toni Morrison takes us back to the late 17th century America. The plot gives her an opportunity to present Americain the making, there is no US yet, there are colonies, each somewhat differentin their culture, religion or attitude to slavery. Morrison adroitly shapes the plotin such a way as to give the reader at least an impression of the variety that once was America, sending her characters on distant voyages. The differences are the most clearly visiblein the opposition between Maryland & New York yet the choice of character 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 seems much more interestedin her characters. This concentration is reflectedin the form of the book - we get to know about the events from the charactersin a series of monologues which culminatein the final monologue of Florens' mother which ties some of the book's loose ends & 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 usualin 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 missingin more traditional history writing both fictional & scholarly.
In short: another great book from a Nobel-prize winning novelist.
"I don't think God knows who we are. I think He would like us, if He knew us, but I don't think He knows about us." - By: Mary Whipple, 11 Nov 2008 (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 & involving philosophical, Biblical, & feminist novel setin the Atlantic colonies between 1682 & 1690. Her impressionistic story traces slavery from its early roots, using unique voices--African, Native American, & white--while moving back & forthin 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," & 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 & works for the next eight years on Vaark's rural New York farm. Lina, a Native American, who works with her, tellsin 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, & Vaark is hoping that eight-year-old Florens will help alleviate Rebekkah's loneliness. Vaark, himself an orphan & poorhouse survivor, describes his journeys from New York to Maryland & Virginia, commenting on the role of religionin the culture of the different colonies, along with their attitudes toward slavery.
All these characters are bereft of their roots, struggling to survivein an alien environment filled with danger & disease. When smallpox threatens Rebekkah's lifein 1692, Florens, now sixteen, is sent to find a black freedman who has some knowledge of herbal medicines. Her journey is dangerous & ultimately proves to be the turning pointin 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, & showing how all the women are victimized. They are "of & for men," people who "never shape the world, The world shapes us." As the women journey toward self-enlightenment, Morrison describes their progressin often Biblical cadences, & by the end of this novel, the reader understands what "a mercy" really means. An intense & 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 (Vintage Classics)
Jazz
Song of Solomon
Love
Playingin the Dark: Whiteness & the Literary Imagination
