A Mercy - Toni Morrison

2008, 178 pages.
US of the 1690s. Florence is an African slave, separated from her mother and baby brother as part of a debt settlement between her previous master, Senor, to Sir, her new master, and arrived to what will become New York state, a wild country, forested and full of wild animals, to help the mistress and the two other slaves to hold the house and the ranch.
The story alternates between Florence and the other two slaves, when she goes to find someone whose identity we find later in the story. Florence tells the story in her own unique language, faulty English since it was not her mother’s tongue. She learned English only when she arrived to her current location when she was a child. The story starts with Florence’s monologue in the present, and the exact circumstances of how she get there, and what happened in the past, we find out gradually during the story, so I will not spoil them here.
The story sounds very intriguing, but the myriad of characters in this short book, and also the associative and confusing at times style of the book, where explanations to things that are said arrive much later, stopped me from identifying with the characters and get into the story, and I ended it with an indifferent feeling. The same feeling I had in her only other book that I read, “Beloved”, and I think her style is just not for me. In spite of all the prizes she got, her books are just not for me. I also lacked some context and historical background. The story is told through the eyes of the characters, which lived in this period and obviously didn’t feel the need to explain their surroundings. This was another reason it was difficult for me to get into the story and “live” it.