A Mercy by Toni Morrison

I finished reading Toni Morrison's short novel A Mercy.  It's well worth reading; challenging in some ways (not least working out whose voice we're hearing at times), lyrical in parts and affecting throughout.  If it's not as fully realised as is her Pulitzer Prize winning novel Beloved, one can hardly fault the author.  Beloved is a once in a lifetime event.  No author could produce two novels at that level of accomplishment.

There is, however, a direct line between A Mercy and Beloved.  The unnamed mother of Florens. like Sethe's Africa-born mother, remembers the pens of her initial captivity and subsequent sale to slave-traders who transport her to Barbados where she is sold to Senhor, the two-dimensional malignant force with whom Jacob reluctantly trades. But A Mercy is not a prequel.  There are no common characters or shared storyline.  The more recent novel deals with an earlier period, the late-17th Century when indentured servants hailing originally from Europe lived little-better lives than African slaves; where religious intolerance amongst Christian sects replayed old European (particularly English) rivalries and where the loss of the New World paradise to the be-spoiling touch of the fallen European re-enacts the original sin and banishment of Genesis.  It's probably no co-incidence that the house built by Jacob, with its serpent-headed wrought iron gates, is on the edge of a hamlet called Milton.

I think it's a good read.  The New York Times called it one of the best books of 2008 and gave a glowing review here.  Others were less persuaded.  In an uncomfortable, rather sneering review, here in The New Yorker, John Updike damned the novel with faint praise.  His thoughts on the text should not prejudice anyone.  It's a decent work of fiction with something valuable to tell us.
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