Barry Unsworth:  The Quality of Mercy

The sequel to sequel to Sacred Hunger, discussed earlier this year.  In that novel, we saw the sailors of a slave ship bound for the New World mutiny when some of the crew tossed live humans overboard, and the mutineers took refuge in Florida, where they lived for many years until they were tracked down by the ship owner’s son and were brought to England for trial.  We’re not ready to leave their story and Unsworth affords us more in The Quality of Mercy. The year now is 1767, and Unsworth, true to form, shows appreciation for the mind-sets and physical features of life in the past but, at the same time, supports his interest in commonly held societal ideas of the time as well as new ones surfacing in the law.

“Deeply moving. . . . Unsworth is equally fluent writing about the lives of bankers and coal miners, judges and slaves, and he brings his characters together with authority and grace.” —The Wall Street Journal