"A Mercy" by Toni Morrison

I know I am supposed to gush about the new Toni Morrison novel, as though her name and accomplishments were a sort of talisman or guarantor of excellence, but "A Mercy" left me, for the most part, cold. Her writing was solid, which one would expect of a Nobel laureate, and she performs a deft job of creating different voices for narrating the different characters. It is an interesting exploration of the different kinds of slavery that existed in late-17th-century North America. But the characters never seemed completely realized, and the big reveal at the end did not automatically follow from the rest of the story.

Morrison is obviously a talented stylist, and there are some truly good bits, with the detailed back story of the improbably named Messalina springing to mind. But "A Mercy" ultimately fails to be anything more, and in some ways a bit less, than the sum of its parts. In attempting to explore the notions of slavery in the late 1600s, she does a decent job of placing us there. But she fails to craft a compelling story from what are some very good pieces.