Review: 'The Mercies' by Kiran Millwood Hargrave

 A historical storm, the death of an island's menfolk, and a Scottish witch-hunter. This is truly all I needed to hear about The Mercies in order to desperately crave it. Add to that a stunning cover and the mere whisper of doomed love, and I knew I was in for a brilliant time. Thanks to my housemates for gifting me this book for my birthday!

Pub. Date: 2/23/2021
Publisher: Picador

Finnmark, Norway, 1617. Twenty-year-old Maren Bergensdatter 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 Northern town of Vardø must fend for themselves.

Three years later, a sinister figure arrives. 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 pushed together and 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 1620 witch trials, The Mercies is a feminist story of love, evil, and obsession, set at the edge of civilization.

Taking her inspiration from history, Kiran Millwood Hargrave weaves a tale about women that feels both old as time and yet fresh and new. By taking two different perspectives, that of Maren who grew up on Vardø, and Ursa who grew up "well" in Bergen, Hargrave is able to present a wider perspective of what women can do and did do. Both wield their own power, both have their own vulnerabilities. Neither, however, can thrive safely in the world as it is. Winter is as dangerous as a husband in The Mercies. This is undoubtedly a feminist novel, one that occasionally blazes with anger. But it is also a historical novel tracking the movement of power dynamics, the growing of group hysteria, and the connection between people and the land. The Mercies has so much to offer to the reader, so many visceral details, sweeping vistas, and touching moments, that it is hard to sum up in a few paragraphs. 

Maren is one of the few women on Vardø who sees the sea swallow almost all their men. In shock, the women try their best to survive the harsh climate in the north of Norway, learning new skills, striking uneasy alliances and ignoring growing rifts. When a new pastor arrives, these rifts grow larger. When he announces the arrival of another man, Absalom Cornet, hunter of witches, 'rifts' becomes a laughable word to describe what is happening to this community of women. With Absalom comes Ursa, ripped away from her life in town and a complete novice at housework and dealing with the cold. A tentative friendship grows between her and Maren as the tension on Vardø rises. I fell in love with both Maren and Ursa almost immediately. At their core they are both hopeful, yet life provides each with challenges, restrictions and surprises both kind and dreadful. I was also captivated by Diinna, a Sami woman and Maren's sister-in-law, whose place in Vardø was never safe but has also never been less sure, and Kristen, a Vardø woman trying to keep the island going. 

The Mercies is stunningly written by Kiran Millwood Hargrave. There is a strong Nordic atmosphere that permeates her prose, which is calm until its tempestuous, cold until its blazing, precise until there are no more words. There is tenderness in the details Hargrave brings up, but there is a ruthlessness in how those details come back to haunt her characters. There is a quiet dread to The Mercies which is perfectly executed. As the tension on Vardø grows, as the noose tightens, I found myself getting more tense as well, reading more rapidly and hoping it wouldn't end the way I feared it would. All of Hargrave's characters felt real and alive in a way that viscerally brought the tension of her plot to the foreground. Particularly Maren, with the deprivations she has known and the hopes she has, really stayed with me in the days after finishing this book. I can't wait to read more by Hargrave in the future.

I give this novel...

4 Universes!

The Mercies is a stunning historical fiction novel full of life, and a suspense book full of quiet. I can't wait to push this book into the hands of others!