In the 1680s the slave trade in the Americas is still in its infancy. Jacob Vaark 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, who can read and write and might be useful on his farm. Rejected by her mother, Florens looks for love, first from Lina, an older servant woman at her new master's house, and later from the handsome blacksmith, an African, never enslaved, who comes riding into their lives. A Mercy reveals what lies beneath the surface of slavery. But at its heart, like Beloved, it is the ambivalent, disturbing story of a mother and a daughter - a mother who casts off her daughter in order to save her, and a daughter who may never exorcise that abandonment.
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0 0(This turned out to be less of a review, and more of an update on my reading situation ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)
It has been over 2 months since I've read anything resembling a book. And I wanted to finish at least one book on my 'currently--lol' reading shelf before I opened a new one. So I picked this one since it was short and I had already made a lot of progress.
My rating right now would be 2 stars because I'm in a reading slump, and I picked this up last year in April if you can believe it. I didn't hate it. I just don't remember enough of what I read earlier to know what my thoughts were exactly. To be fair, I still knew most of the characters, so don't judge me for not restarting the book in its entirety. I just get way to many déjà-vu feelings when I do that and get frustrated.
This is also why I ultimately gave this book 3 stars. In all fairness, I would have enjoyed this book if I didn't get hit by a major reading slump last fall. Or was it summer? I honestly don't remember when I stopped having any interest in books. I'm trying to get back into it. Please wish me luck.
PS: Toni Morrison's writing style is superb and flows effortlessly, so read her works! I just couldn't really connect to a character in this one.
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