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167 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2008
‘There is no protection. To be female in this place is to be an open wound that cannot heal. Even if scars form, the festering is ever below.’
the original seven years stretched to twenty-some, he said, and he had long ago forgotten most of the mischief that kept extending his bondage.One cannot but think of today’s extension of tours of duty in the military.
Religion, as Rebekka experienced if from her mother, was a flame fueled by a wondrous hatred.In one scene, Florens is suspected by a bizarre woman of being a witch and is forced to strip so she can be checked to see if she has a tail. Later, she attaches herself to a free black man in another form of devotion, only to have that work out badly. Lina had been taken in by a group of fundamentalists, who, unkindly, named her Messalina, seeing her as cursed by God. A curate is guilty of buggering a young boy.
…it was clear in her household that execution was a festivity as exciting as a king’s parade. Brawls, knifings and kidnaps were so common in the city of her birth that the warnings of slaughter in a new, unseen world were like threats of bad weatherboth in the old world and the new. Jakob offers a relatively safe place, a fenced-in peaceful community where orphans collect.
Solitude, regret and fury would have broken her had she not erased those six years preceding the death of the world. The company of other children, industrious mothers in beautiful jewelry, the majestic plan of life: when to vacate, to harvest, to burn, to hunt; ceremonies of death, birth and worship. She stored and sorted what she dared to recall and eliminated the rest, an activity that shaped her inside and out. By the time Mistress came, her self-invention was almost perfected. Soon it was irresistible.While maybe not the masterpiece that Beloved was, A Mercy is a very dense novel, a torte of a work, covering a range of subjects rich in significance, in language that is moving and penetrating.
It was not a miracle. Bestowed by God. It was a mercy. Offered by a human.