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

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

—Time

"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

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

—The Washington Post Book World