Critical Praise

"A Mercy is a sinewy novel [that] contains passages of insight and sensuality... It gathers its own power: Morrison plays a tight game with the social, legal and personal connections between her chess set of characters, a game in which each word–and every detail–counts... Morrison renders the ugly beautiful and the unimaginable real: she is a fine teacher."

—The Times Literary Supplement

"A Mercy conjures up the beautiful, untamed, lawless world that was America in the seventeenth-century with the same sort of lyrical, verdant prose that distinguished [Beloved]. . . . A heartbreaking account of lost innocence and fractured dreams. . . . One of Morrison's most haunting works yet."

—The New York Times

"Luminous and complex... Some of Morrison's best writing in years."

—Time

"Spellbinding... Dazzling... [A Mercy] stands alongside Beloved as a unique triumph."

—The Washington Post Book World