Mercy

by Lara Santoro

Book Overview

A transcendent and powerful first novel about two women seeking justice and hope in Africa. With a swift, compressed narrative style and compassionate vision that recalls the works of Graham Greene,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1590512715
• ISBN13: 9781590512715
• Release Date: September 2007
• Publisher: Other Press (NY)
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 1.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.3" x 8.8"

Customer Reviews

Buy this book--it's a great read!

This story grabs and pulls you in right from the very beginning.The author is gutsy enough to create a main character--Anna--who, at first, is not very loveable. There appears on the scene a heroine of sorts--Mercy-- who tries, with mixed success, to shake some sense into Anna. But Mercy has flaws of her own and thankfully, the story is far from predictable. The book gives you a fascinating look at the life of the journalists living in Africa; they risk their sanity, their loves and their very lives to "get the story." Lara Santoro's writing is beautifully crafted, yet powerfully real. There's an important "message" in this book about Africa and HIV-AIDS but there is no lecturing, and no quick fixes presented. Instead, it brings the overwhelming "big picture" down to the personal level; in doing so, it touches your heart. You won't soon forget this story.

A foreign correspondent's journey

Mercy tells the story of a foreign correspondent's journey through Africa and beyond. It's a revealing portrait of the psyche of a journalist working in unfamiliar places. Much of the novel's charm comes in the interplay of an edgy, broken set of reporters who are always on the move, drawn to African wars because they echo their own internal conflicts in some way. At the heart of the book stands the relationship between the reporter, Anna, and her Kenyan maid. Mercy's a larger than life character who starts of as a hireling but quickly becomes a kind of savior. As Anna embraces Mercy's struggles she slowly starts to see the continent, and herself, in a fuller way.

Tightly written and powerful

First, I confess to being acquainted with the author and to having lived in Kenya for two years. I found the novel compelling and affecting. By understating emotions, not dragging out scenes, and individualizing the HIV crisis in Africa to two very believable women, Santoro has written a novel that was hard to put down and will stay with me for a long time. This was not a polemic about the failure of governments and of drug companies to do more, but a story in a powerful narrative voice that conveyed reality through the eyes of a very real and engaging narrator. I also appreciated that she conveyed the strength and joy of Kenyan women in face of the hand life deals them.

Gripping narrative of Africa's moral horrors

This is a gripping, gripping narrative that plunges the reader into the violent morass that is modern-day Africa and asks some very hard questions about how the rest of us can sit back and let it all happen. Santoro's narrator is a western journalist on the very brink of self-destruction, and her foil is an outsize (in every sense) housemaid who acts as her goad, her conscience and, ultimately, her salvation. Santoro's prose is spare and unsentimental, and the book crackles with energy and quiet moral outrage. As far as I know, nobody up to now has quite managed to make compelling novelistic drama of Africa's multiple 21st-century woes -- starting with the AIDS pandemic, which is at the heart of this book. Santoro succeeds brilliantly. Highly recommended.

A Great Read!!!

Mercy is a moving, beautifully written novel set in present day Africa. A tale of two women, the vibrant, colorful Mercy who is housekeeper to Anna, a foreign correspondent whose life seems meaningless beyond her work and her flawed relationships. It is a story of survival and courage in our time. Ms Santoro presents us with a harsh portrait of Africa in the raw but gives us hope for a brighter future borne in the strength of its people.