The Mercies
von Kiran Millwood Hargrave
After the men in an Arctic Norwegian town are wiped out, the women must survive a sinister threat in this "perfectly told" 1600s parable of "a world gone mad" (Adriana Trigiani).Finnmark, Norway, 1617. Twenty-year-old Maren Magnusdatter stands on the craggy coast, watching the sea break into a sudden and reckless storm. Forty fishermen, including her brother and father, are drowned and left broken on the rocks below. With the menfolk wiped out, the women of the tiny Arctic town of Vardø must fend for themselves.Three years later, a stranger arrives on their shore. Absalom Cornet comes from Scotland, where he burned witches in the northern isles. He brings with him his young Norwegian wife, Ursa, who is both heady with her husband's authority and terrified by it. In Vardø, and in Maren, Ursa sees something she has never seen before: independent women. But Absalom sees only a place untouched by God, and flooded with a mighty evil. As Maren and Ursa are drawn to one another in ways that surprise them both, the island begins to close in on them, with Absalom's iron rule threatening Vardø's very existence.Inspired by the real events of the Vardø storm and the 1621 witch trials, The Mercies is a story of love, evil, and obsession, set at the edge of civilization.One of the Best Books of the YearUSA TodayGood Housekeeping
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The Mercies
von Kiran Millwood Hargrave
After the men in an Arctic Norwegian town are wiped out, the women must survive a sinister threat in this "perfectly told" 1600s parable of "a world gone mad" (Adriana Trigiani).Finnmark, Norway, 1617. Twenty-year-old Maren Magnusdatter stands on the craggy coast, watching the sea break into a sudden and reckless storm. Forty fishermen, including her brother and father, are drowned and left broken on the rocks below. With the menfolk wiped out, the women of the tiny Arctic town of Vardø must fend for themselves.Three years later, a stranger arrives on their shore. Absalom Cornet comes from Scotland, where he burned witches in the northern isles. He brings with him his young Norwegian wife, Ursa, who is both heady with her husband's authority and terrified by it. In Vardø, and in Maren, Ursa sees something she has never seen before: independent women. But Absalom sees only a place untouched by God, and flooded with a mighty evil. As Maren and Ursa are drawn to one another in ways that surprise them both, the island begins to close in on them, with Absalom's iron rule threatening Vardø's very existence.Inspired by the real events of the Vardø storm and the 1621 witch trials, The Mercies is a story of love, evil, and obsession, set at the edge of civilization.One of the Best Books of the YearUSA TodayGood Housekeeping
Aktuelle Rezensionen(3)
Rezension von janai will be found staring at the wall for the foreseeable future
Rezension von James LückHonestly didn't expect that ending. First half was a bit boring to read, but in the second new things keep happening. Strong indépendant women, show us the struggle to be themselves.
Rezension von kenapologies to the author because i started speed-reading after two-thirds of this book. the urgency was far too palpable that it always felt as if i cannot read fast enough. i just needed to know what happened. the beginning of THE MERCIES was a bit of a slow start, but that's a personal issue rather than a stylistic one. i'm not too keen on the nomenclature since i don't read a lot of nordic literature so it took a bit of slow-reading for my brain to get accustomed to it. but once i did, it was easy cruising. for the most part, what kept me reading was the love story within it, between Maren and Ursa. i love how understated the love and the longing was. the prose of this book took advantage of my hyper-active imagination. but what clung to me is the futility of my rage over the witch trials (if one can even call them that, when the implication of a trial is that it's fair, and we all know how witch trials are). anything that comes close to religious mania and persecution of the unknown by the aforementioned cowards never fails to rile me up. godly? what's so godly about forced confessions and fear of the unknown? morons, all of them. and really, i don't care that i'm being "unfair" for judging how stupid these witch hunters are. how cowardly. how weak. how i look at them from my modern lens. why should i care, when they never would have allowed a measure of empathy to the witches they burned? my favourite part of this book has to be the sheer drop of that ending. i don't like long denouements, as everyone at this point knows. it was such a succinct and clear ending that i don't even begrudge the sorrow it left me with. which is okay. let me have my rage, my fury, and my sadness over this book. it's infinitely better than being emotionally-complacent even for those who are long gone.