The Quality of Mercy

Sacred Hunger #2

by Barry Unsworth

Spring of 1767: Erasmus Kemp has brought back fugitive settlers from America, among them Sullivan, an Irish fiddler....The Quality of Mercy is rich and rewarding historical fiction of the highest order from the master, Barry Unsworth.

It is the spring of 1767 and Erasmus Kemp has brought back fugitive settlers from America, among them Sullivan, an Irish fiddler. As Sullivan sits in jail, charged with playing a role in the loss of Kemp's father's ship, he makes a solemn vow to gain his freedom and personally deliver the news of a shipmate's passing to his family.

Eventually Sullivan's prayers are heard and he manages to escape from jail. But little does he know he is on a direct course to encounter his nemesis once more, as the two men become embroiled in an epic struggle that pits Kemp's insatiable desire for wealth against Sullivan's passionate advocacy for the poor and the powerless. The Quality of Mercy is rich and rewarding historical fiction of the highest order from the master, Barry Unsworth.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction, British Literature, Historical, Literature, Literary Fiction, 21st Century

304 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 2011

About the author

Barry Unsworth was an English writer known for his historical fiction. He published 17 novels, and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize three times, winning once for the 1992 novel Sacred Hunger.

Reviews

[Bettie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Description: A sequel to Sacred Hunger follows the fortunes of two central characters from that book: Sullivan, an Irish fiddler, and Erasmus Kemp, the son of a disgraced Liverpool slave-ship owner who hung himself.

To avenge his father's death, Erasmus Kemp has had the rebellious sailors of his father's ship, including Sullivan, brought back to London to stand trial on charges of mutiny and piracy. But as the novel opens, a blithe Sullivan has escaped and is making his way on foot to the north of England, stealing and scamming as he goes.

His destination is the colliery village where his dead shipmate, Billy Blair, lived: he has pledged to tell the family how Billy met his end.

In this village, Thorpe in the East Durham coalfields, live Billy's sister Nan and her miner husband, James Bordon. Their three sons are all destined to follow their father down the pit. The youngest, only 7, is enjoying his last summer above ground. The terrible conditions in which mineworkers laboured are vividly evoked, and Bordon has dreams of escaping the mine with his family.

Meanwhile in London a passionate anti-slavery campaigner, Frederick Ashton, gets involved in a second case relating to the lost ship. Erasmus Kemp is claiming financial compensation for the cargo of sick slaves who were thrown overboard to drown, and Ashton is representing the insurers who dispute his claim. Ashton triumphs in court, but not before his beautiful sister, Jane, has encountered Erasmus Kemp and found herself powerfully attracted to him despite their polarised views on slavery.

Opening: On finding himself thus accidently free, Sullivan's only thought was to get as far as he could from Newgate Prison while it was still dark.

I had been thinking about this book all day since reading Station Eleven and truly wishing I was rather re-reading Unsworth's Morality Play. So here I am, after a somewhat frenetic torchlight search of all the bookshelves, of which I have so many, and the electricity is out due to the BBC weather forecasters sending BIG THICK WHITE ARROWS over my island.



Are you still with me?

Anyways, this needs a drumroll because I am ever so, ever so fond of Barry Unsworth's writing, a three star from him flays the hide off your average bestseller.

I am sure that I express the sentiments of the members of this court, and every citizen of the land, when I say that the blacks thrown overboard were property and nothing else, they were cargo, as bales of cotton might have been. No charge of murder can be brought against the crew, no charge even of cruelty in any degree whatever, their actions were not in any degree improper-"

Some Irish fiddle music to accompany the major players into the Durham coalfields for that showdown we all know is a-coming.

Tansy Pudding mentioned page 153

5* Sacred Hunger
4* The Quality of Mercy (Sacred Hunger, #2)

5* Morality Play
4* Stone Virgin
4* Pascali's Island
3* The Hide

[Felice · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the spirit of full disclosure I want to tell you that Barry Unsworth is one of my favorite authors. His Man Booker Prize winning novel Sacred Hunger is one of my all time revered, most recommend, if-it-turns-out-you-don’t-appreciate-it-don’t-tell-because-I-will-think-less-of-you books. When I found out a few months ago that Unsworth’s new novel would be a sequel to Sacred Hunger, The Quality ofMercy, my excitement was strong enough to be slightly embarrassing.

There is always a question with sequels, “Do I have to read the books in order?” That question is also a dead giveaway. Real readers never ask that question. They HAVE TO read connected novels whether they are a series of two or twenty-two in order. It’s hard wired into the DNA. So I answer the question for all of the less obsessive readers in the world. The answer is, “Yes.”
It is inevitable that in putting down my thoughts on The Quality of Mercy I will be spilling out some plot from Sacred Hunger as well. There will be absolutely no spoilers concerning The Quality of Mercy in this review but there will be a couple spoilers regarding Sacred Hunger.

The Quality of Mercy is set in 1767, two years after the end of Sacred Hunger. In Sacred Hunger Unsworth designed his brilliant turmoil around the deadly slave triangle of England, Africa and the New World. The central plot in The Quality of Mercy centers on a court case resulting from the mutiny of the slave ship in Sacred Hunger. Erasmus Kemp is looking for financial compensation for slaves lost on his Father’s ship. His legal nemesis is the abolitionist Frederick Ashton. Ashton’s passion for ending slavery extends as far as freeing the slaves and sending them back to their homeland but not as far accepting them as equals.

On other fronts mutinous members of the crew are still on the loose and need to be rounded up for prosecution and as witnesses. Kemp is looking to purchase a mine. This particular mine is desirable because it is worked by children and therefore more of a money maker than most mines. This subplot highlights the many forms of slavery that existed across races and countries. The mine workers were as hopelessly tied to mines as the African slaves were to the plantations.

Barry Unsworth is the historical novelist that all other novelists daydream about being. He writes from a position of authority. He has every social and historical detail in place, every conversation is pitch perfect, every thought or action ascribed to a character is in keeping with the historical period and with that character’s personality. All that is amazing but what is truly astonishing is the nuanced way in which Unsworth carries all this research and plotting into what we all want the most-- captivating and rewarding storytelling.

[Philip · Rating 5 out of 5]

At first sight, The Quality Of Mercy by Barry Unsworth might appear to be a sequel. Sacred Hunger, the novel that won the author the Booker Prize, is a vast and highly moving tale about the slave trade. The Quality Of Mercy continues some of the loose ends that Sacred Hunger left, but it goes far beyond being a mere adjunct to its larger predecessor. The Quality Of Mercy makes its own points, just as significant as those of Sacred Hunger, but its form is more succinct and, in some ways, its message is more telling.

As ever with Barry Unsworth, the novel goes far beyond mere story, describes much more than the countable events that befall its characters. In Sacred Hunger, the focus was a mercantilist venture in the inhumane human trade of the eighteenth century. It was the history, its veracity, its credibility, its rawness and ultimately unacceptable reality that shone through and rendered the book a completely satisfying experience both as a narrative and as an intellectual experience.

In The Quality Of Mercy, Barry Unsworth continues the tale of the Liverpool Merchant, the ship that made Sacred Hunger’s voyage in the triangular trade. But it is more than a decade since the endeavour came to its unfortunate end and Erasmus Kemp, son of the venture capitalist whose dreams of profit proved no more substantial than a pending insurance claim, is pursuing an action against a gang of mutineers from the ship who still languish in a London jail. He is also pursuing the insurance claim, the outcome of which depends in part on how the crewmen’s mutiny is seen.

The Ashtons are brother and sister and, for their own reasons, support the abolition of slavery. One of the hand-clapping surprises of reading Barry Unsworth is his ability to interpret the history associated with his plots. There is no mere plod through events as they unfold. Neither is there cheap sensationalism derived from overstatement. What Barry Unsworth achieves is a rounded picture of issues that incorporates the complications, contexts and nuances of a debate that are often lost in summary accounts. And he always manages to achieve this with elegance, wit and considerable beauty. Abolitionists, you see, were not all liberals campaigning for human rights and concepts of freedom. Politics have always been more complex than that. Read the book to understand the nuances.

Well, the Ashtons oppose Kemp, at least the brother does. The sister, Jane, eventually makes liaisons of her own with Erasmus Kemp. His anticipation of willing enslavement by her prompts the declaration of some rather uncharacteristic promises of the kind that men are prone to make when presented with opportunity.

There is the case of Evans, who in theory has been manumitted and thus rendered a free man, but whose former owners still regard as their property to sell. There is Sullivan, an Irish fiddler from the Liverpool Merchant, who breaks out of prison to fulfill a promise to a deceased crew member that he would contact his family to tell of his fate. That family lives in Durham and work in the mines, work in a domestic slavery from the age of seven, the dark underground galleys of the mine reminding us directly of the below deck cargo hold of the ocean-going slaver. Then there is the mine’s owner, a landowner and a Lord, no less, who lives in a state of permanent debt, more interested in trinkets than lives. And then there is the dawn of capitalism in the form of the nouveau-riche Kemp’s intended purchase and reform of the Lord’s mines, a proposal characterised by notions of technological innovation, increased efficiency and projected profit. A little piece of previously unwanted land might hold all kinds of keys.

The Quality Of Mercy is thus much more than an historical novel. It is also much more than a tale of slavery and emerging capitalism. It is more than mutiny aboard ship and revenge via the Law. It is also much more than an essay o social class relations at the start of the Industrial Revolution in Britain. It is no less than a Barry Unsworth novel and therefore simultaneously emotional and intellectual, a rounded and completely satisfying experience for the reader. But it is a complex book about complex issues. Expect to be challenged.

[Ron Charles · Rating 4 out of 5]

No one can accuse Barry Unsworth of letting the success of “Sacred Hunger” rush him into a sequel. It’s been 20 years since his epic story about the English slave trade won the Booker Prize. By now, some of the readers who enjoyed that novel have died; everyone else will need a refresher. But Unsworth is one of the greatest living historical novelists, and this is what he does best: He entices us back into a past gloriously appointed with archival detail and moral complexity.

“The Quality of Mercy” definitely continues “Sacred Hunger,” but it’s a wholly different book in scope and tone. Whereas that earlier story sailed across the globe from England to Africa to the New World, tracing a violent triangle of betrayal, abduction and murder, this new, much-shorter novel stays in England as a tale of financial calculation and legal strategy. The brutal hold of a slave ship has been replaced by a London courtroom; the struggle for survival distilled into vigorous argument and cross-examination.

It’s 1767, and Erasmus Kemp has tracked down the crew members who absconded to Florida with his late father’s slave ship and has hauled them back to Newgate Prison. But the long-delayed satisfaction he hopes to exact from these sailors is being challenged on two legal fronts. First, the insurers are balking at paying for the 85 sick slaves thrown overboard by the captain 14 years earlier. Second, a wealthy abolitionist has taken up the crew members’ defense, arguing that when they killed their captain, they weren’t committing mutiny; they were protecting innocent Africans from drowning.

The most transporting aspect of the novel is that Unsworth obliges us to explore this conflict in the ethical and legal terms of its time, not ours. If the slaves are legal cargo, how can throwing them overboard be acts of murder?

In the country brilliantly re-created here, the Industrial Revolution is just getting in gear; new attitudes about the sanctity of personal property are grinding against new attitudes about the nature of humanity. Pulled by strident abolitionists on one side and craven sugar interests on the other, English law is in turmoil. The courts seem wary of issuing any broad ruling that might offend either the ideals of freedom or the demands of commerce.

The legal issues are sometimes arcane, and the risk of falling into the cadence of a lecture is high, but Unsworth never lets that happen. Instead, “The Quality of Mercy” fleshes out these contractual and ethical conflicts in precise, searching scenes. And even better, the book avoids easy caricatures that would have us feeling superior to those narrow-minded figures of the past whom we, surely, would not have been. Kemp has no qualms about buying and selling Africans and his worship of economic liberty blinds him to the murderous treatment of others, but he’s not villainous. We see him wounded with self-doubt, still grieving over the death of his father. For all his arrogance and irritability, honor and principle are important to him, and he’s capable of transformative acts of forgiveness, even when he regards it as a weakness, a dereliction of duty.

What’s more, Frederick Ashton, the wealthy abolitionist who serves as Kemp’s opponent, makes a wonderfully complicated hero. Despite his opposition to slavery and the flurry of legal challenges he’s willing to fund, he’s no cheerleader for multiculturalism: He wants the slaves freed so they can all go back to Africa where they belong. Unsworth clearly outlines the crucial role such people played in the fight against slavery, but as a novelist, he’s more interested in the unpredictable ­topography of human character. A teetotaler and prude, Ashton suffers from the stridency of his moral superiority; he feels intensely sympathetic but only in an abstract, self-elevating sense. His dear sister, in quiet moments of reflection, acknowledges “the spirit of dedication that made him what he was, and the sharply declining order of importance he gave to the sensibilities of others, and even their welfare, when they were not instrumental to his cause.”

Even as the cases wind through the courts in London, the novel spools out into another rich storyline involving a small coal-mining community in Durham, an early version of the town where the author grew up. It’s a place of crushing labor that sends children into the poisonous pits when they turn 7. But again Unsworth thwarts our easy judgments, eschewing generalities about the poor laboring masses for a lush portrayal that endows these people with individual lives, aspirations and moments of triumph.

To be sure, this is a smaller novel than “Sacred Hunger,” but it’s another engaging demonstration of the talent that’s made Unsworth one of the very few writers to appear on the Booker shortlist three times. His sentences recall the sharp detail, moral sensitivity and ready wit of Charles Dickens. But his sense of the lumbering, uneven gait of social progress is more sophisticated, more tempered, one might say, by history.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/enterta...

[Nadine in California · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book takes over events at the end of Sacred Hunger, 14 years later. Although a few of the characters reappear, it's really the moral arc of the story that continues to be explored in a new setting. This moral arc may bend toward justice, but it's not a simple or straight path and in this book it centers on the complexities of mercy and rings true in the 21st century as much as the 18th. All the characters were great, but Jane Ashton was the most interesting to me - probably because she felt so Austen-like. Not like a copy, but like a person Elizabeth Bennet would love to talk to.

[Ian · Rating 4 out of 5]

A sequel to Barry Unsworth's Booker-prize winning novel, "Sacred Hunger" which I read about 20 years ago and which I thought was a magnificent achievement in both plot and characterisation. I had been unsure about reading a sequel in case it detracted from the original novel, but in fact I wasn't at all disappointed with "The Quality of Mercy". It doesn't have the epic sweep of "Sacred Hunger" but is still a high quality novel. Like "Sacred Hunger" the chapters in this novel alternate between separate but connected stories that gradually coalesce, although in this case there are four rather than two threads. For those who have read "Sacred Hunger", this novel focuses on two of the original cast; Erasmus Kemp, the intensely driven merchant who was effectively the "villain" of the first novel, and the Irish fiddler Sullivan. Added to the story are an anti-slavery campaigner, Frederick Ashton, every bit as driven as Kemp; his sister Jane; and a family of Durham miners related to Billy Blair (who was a character from "Sacred Hunger")

Kemp has had the surviving crew members of the ship "Liverpool Merchant" taken back to London to be tried on charges of mutiny and piracy. Sullivan makes a fortuitous escape from prison, and decides to fulfil a promise to Billy Blair by taking news of him to his family in Durham. Sullivan is an sympathetic character and the reader is on his side all the way during his meandering adventures across England. Kemp also pursues a civil claim in the courts against the insurers of the "Liverpool Merchant," and becomes romantically embroiled with Jane Ashton. Frederick Ashton meanwhile, sees an opportunity for legal precedents to be set that would help the anti-slavery cause, and views his sister's involvement with Kemp as nothing more than an opportunity to convert a slaver to the path of righteousness. In Durham, Billy Blair's brother-in-law John Borden dreams of escaping the mines and farming his own land, whilst the local mine owner seeks additional finance from...Erasmus Kemp.

As always with Barry Unsworth, the historical detail is astonishing. The Durham miners are lowered into mineshafts gripping a rope, with their children balanced on their knees and holding their legs. The gruesome conditions of 18th century prisons, the colour and character of village fairs, the cast of characters travelling the roads, are all brought vividly to life. I could wax lyrical about this novel for several more paragraphs, but for reasons of brevity I will limit my further comments to saying, "Read this, but especially, read "Sacred Hunger."

[Mij Woodward · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favorite books ever.

The reason for that is because it was such a high to have my eyes opened, not only about the slave trade, the landed gentry, coal mining and more in England during the 1760's, but also about how it is that people do the things they do sometimes.

Toward the end, I COULD NOT PUT THIS BOOK DOWN!!!! I forced my husband to wait for any conversation at our morning coffee yesterday until I had finally reached the last page, and then I forced him to listen to me go on and on about the book, why I loved it so, and how I could hardly wait for him to read it so I could tell him more (not wanting to spoil his discovery of the plot, etc.)

The two things I loved the most about this book: (1) I loved the way the various streams of stories all came together at the end, how the various characters all interacted with each other toward the end; and (2) I loved learning about how things were "back then" in England, all brought to life for me, transporting me back there.

One of my ancestors worked in coal mines in Scotland, as a child and young man, in the latter part of the 1800's, a century after the time period set for the mining town of Durham in The Quality of Mercy. By the 1800's, things probably had improved for coal miners and their families, but likely much of the horrors of this labor remained the same. Details were given me by Barry Unsworth that no history book could relay. I needed to identify with the characters he gave me in Durham, who worked in the mines, including the children, to get a picture of the whole thing. And that beautiful stretch of land called the Dene the workers walked through on the way to and from work. I pictured it all.

With all this praise for the book, I will admit that it actually took me until half way through to become engrossed. What kept me glued was the history I was learning. And then, during the second half of the book, I became more glued because I then cared about what was going to happen to each of these characters.

It's been about 24 hours since I finished reading The Quality of Mercy, and I am still on cloud nine.

[Robert Strandquist · Rating 5 out of 5]

Masterful - Barry Unsworth weaves a wide web of complex sub-plots in a narrow time frame that are bound more by the theme of social justice than by the coincidences of their interactions. I love his style of writing that blends the atmosphere of the late 1760's with the psychological sensitivity of the 20th century. It's masterfully written. The omniscient narrator leaves nothing for readers to wonder about. Every certainty in a character's attitude is counterbalance by a doubt in another's. I revelled in the scenes of Sullivan's vagabond journey from Florida to Durham. His cavalier lifestyle brought him all sorts of fortunes and misfortunes, but he was ultimately rewarded for loyalty. Unsworth sets up several virtues as shining paths to life's less tangible but more rewarding goals. Most of all, Unsworth uses historical events, court rulings, persons, etc. as the bases for demonstrating that justice continues to prevail. I thought the most powerful scenes were in Thorpe, the coal-mining village near Durham. He took us down in the pits several times. Here we tasted, smelled and touched the shining rock and felt the unyielding weight of the skidding sleds that broke the miners' backs to make others rich. In these scenes, the written dialogue was colloquial and revealed the rustic characters' naive wisdom borne from a combination of hard work and love of nature. The scene in the small shed between the manipulating banker, Kemp and local miner Borton, is very strong. I will look for Unsworth's "Sacred Hunger," his Booker winner to read next.

[Barbara · Rating 3 out of 5]

Set in 1767 and covering a wide range of historical facts. From the slave trade to the mining industry to the court rooms.
I found it quite hard going in places, but it was so interesting, I just had to persevere.

[aPriL does feral sometimes · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think Robert Strandquist's review is the best review that suits what I would say about this book.

I would add that the excellence of 'The Quality of Mercy' relies on the way it tackles so much and does it so well. Unsworth has written a historical novel that captures the sounds, scents, dress, and even the English household accroutrements of the middle 18th century. In 300 pages he has deftly strung together the atmospheres of living stranded in Florida, being aboard a slave ship and inside an English court of law, visiting the offices of several bureaucrats and the awful prisons, watching hangings, living in a small mining town and a city. Plus he contrasted a variety of classes from the landed aristocrats, upper class lawyers, mercantile bankers and insurance companies, to the laborers in the mines and the poor of the workhouses and impressed sailors. The book never felt unbalanced with superfluous characters or details or subplots. At the same time that the reader enjoys a bit of a thriller story Unsworth makes the slavery of the poor regardless of race very clear and how it was not limited to African captives. On top of all these interesting explorations, Unsworth has created believable characters and realistically examines their motives in acting as they do so that I found it difficult to label anyone a bad person, despite lots of grief caused by a monstrous lack of empathy between the classes of social life. The poignancy of six-year-old miners' children flying kites for the first and last time before going to work in the dark, dangerous mines for 14 hour work-days was particularly sad.

However, the Great Merciful Button Symbol utterly mystified me .....

[Suzanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Quality of Mercy is the sequel to Barry Unsworth's Booker Prize winner The Sacred Hunger, a novel about a slave ship revolt where the survivors ended up living peacefully in an interracial community in Florida, before they were found and captured by British soldiers acting in business interests. In this follow-up book, the characters are various people involved, in some way, with the ensuing trial.

I have to admit, I enjoyed this novel even more than it's predecessor. It's thought-provoking and entirely human. I loved it! 4 1/2 stars.

[Stephen · Rating 5 out of 5]

If ever there was an author who had earned the right to insert 'quality' into his titles, it's Barry Unsworth. The final of his books reads like a greatest hits, with echoes of Sugar and Rum, Sacred Hunger and Morality Tale. It feels appropriate that Unsworth circled back to the UK and the starting point for 'The Partnership' (1966), but that the international and historical dimensions of the later books (especially after 1980) are central to the plot.

Part is set in late-eighteenth London, where an escapee from Newgate, an anti-slavery campaigner, and slave-owners seeking recompense for losses all set out. The drama hinges on a boat lost off the Florida coast, where crew and human cargo briefly set up a Rousseu-esque society of wild civility. Brough back to England, some are set to hang, with interests pressing on both sides. Far to the north in distant County Durham, a mining family have no news of one of their number who was on this boat.

This story is multilayered, with Unsworth's characteristic grasp of the macro picture of the economic drivers of the slave trade, dynamic interplays of new and old money to the UK's Industrial Revolution, and the radically different currencies for the working and underclasses, where music, sex, arable land and clothing can be worth their weight in barterable gold. The finery of Unsworth's economic and social history is spun around a tale of vegance, romance and striving for freedom. At the personal level Unsworth strikes yet more gold, with characters that are by turns deceptive, loyal, disappointed and energetic. Unsworth ultimately refuses to allow them to become one dimensional, so that even the most displicable are shown to have relatable impulses and the silver lining of their own doubts. It is both easy to read yet complex.

There are parallels that it would have been easy to belabour. The black faces of the miners and slaves, the crowded pressure of being hidden beneath, the dehumanisation of men to units of economic gain, and the striving for land of their own - all kinships are made with sufficient subtlety. 'The Quality of Mercy' is a manifesto for civil rights that covers ground often trodden in boots, with the light touch of brogues.

For those who only think of 'Sacred Hunger', I would recommend starting here instead. It is much shorter, accessible yet layered, focuses on the same period and topics, and yet also much more typical of Unsworth's wider historical fiction. Unlike several of the fourteen authors I have recently read start-to-finish, at no point have I tired walking in Unsworth's steps. This one feels like a summit with a glorious view back.

[Margaret · Rating 5 out of 5]

Profoundly moving. If this doesn’t convince people in the 21st century of the continuing need to maintain justice in the workplace, nothing will. Set in 1767, it deals with the horrors of British slave ships, the death penalty, the perilous working conditions in collieries, chilling descriptions of child labour and the lack of any common humanity shown by some of the rich to the destitute and poor. The drive for profit at the expense of the workers was all-consuming. There are, of course, many exceptions, including the increasing numbers of people opposed to the slave trade and who fought for its abolition.
The preceding book, Sacred Hunger, is very powerful. The Quality of Mercy is a stunning sequel.

[Dash · Rating 2 out of 5]

Really? Can't believe this was written by the same person who wrote Sacred Hunger.

[Chaitra · Rating 2 out of 5]

I thought the Sacred Hunger was complete in itself and that it did not need a sequel. But, Unsworth wrote an extremely compelling character in Erasmus Kemp and when I figured out Quality of Mercy was about him, I was quite happy to read it. But Erasmus of this book is just not as compelling as the one in Sacred Hunger. His adversary if that is who he is - Frederick Ashton - is no Matthew Paris.

It's actually quite pointless, this story. The mutineers come back with Kemp to England and are in prison awaiting sentence. Ashton, an abolitionist, takes an interest in the case. But, he has another case of slavery going as well - one that has no connection to Erasmus - one that means more to Ashton (not for us, we don't know Evans and we never get to know him) than the Kemp case. There's not much passion in it, but Erasmus comes in contact with Ashton's sister (the one lady who supposedly defies convention because she does not like hoop skirts!!!). She likes his regard for her but takes way too long to decide whether she really likes his regard. We get some really crappy chapters where Erasmus smolders at her and she preens at her power over him and they talk about the coal business. Romantic. It does not help that I kept getting the image of actor Orlando Bloom as Erasmus Kemp - maybe it was the brooding, earnest douche-bag that did it.

In another thread of the story, Sullivan the fiddler makes a lengthy trip from prison to Billy Blair's sister in the coal mines in Durham. We get treated to chapter after chapter of him gaining money by some weird means and then losing it because he's too dumb. This is fun for the first two times and quickly gets old. Kemp for plot contrivance purposes, comes over to the same coal fields in Durham and meets Sullivan. Now we think Erasmus has another adversary to get rid of! But no. Nothing happens. Erasmus turns forgiving for no reason at all. There's also a standoff with Blair's nephew, in which Erasmus just plain hands him the round. Is this what Jane Ashton gave to you Erasmus? Temporary insanity? Stay away!

Here's the thing. We don't get the feeling that Erasmus has changed. He hasn't, but we're told he has. He gets a happy ending, but I'm not too sure he did anything to deserve it. I know that at the end of Sacred Hunger there's intimation that Paris' death changed him, but we only get lip service to that part in this book. The bulk of it (which is all concentrated towards the end of the book) seems to be attributed to Jane Ashton without the hoop skirts - but even that is explicitly told. He never actually thinks that he was wrong to have done what he did, but he's still supposedly redeemed. Maybe Unsworth was in a hurry to complete this. I know he died not long after. But, as it stands, I'm not sure it actually needed to be written.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a sad thing that this was Barry Unsworth's last book, especially since it seemed to hint at a sequel at the very end.

As it is, The Quality of Mercy is itself a sequel to his award-winning Sacred Hunger, which told the tale of a slave ship crew and "cargo" who rose up to take over their foundered ship and then live as a polyglot community in Florida.

In "Quality," the multiracial idyll in Florida has been shattered by Erasmus Kemp, the son of the slave ship owner (who committed suicide after the loss of his vessel). Kemp has gone into the slave-dependent sugar trade to earn a quick fortune, married into a banking family to achieve more permanent wealth, and has used his newfound power to launch an expedition to arrest the slave ship's surviving occupants and bring them in chains back to England to be tried for murder.

This spine is interwoven with three great subplots. In one, Erasmus is smitten by Jane Ashton, the progressive sister of one of his main opponents, an abolitionist. In another, one of the crewmen, the Irish fiddler Sullivan, waltzes out of prison because of a mistake and heads north toward the mining village of Thorpe, to tell the family of his friend, Billy Blair, how Billy had died in Florida. And in the mining village, the Bordon family struggles with the harshness of their lives, as they wait for their youngest son to follow the family trade, going underground at the age of 7.

Unsworth makes each of these stories worth reading on their own, and sends them to their inevitable collision as Erasmus acquires a financial interest in the mines and tries to persuade Jane of his desirability with his ideas for modernizing its ways.

Unsworth does not avoid dramatic moments when they occur naturally, but he also never makes the mistake of relying on them to keep you interested. Instead, you become invested in the characters and their relationships -- and always, in his books, in the ideas and great political debates that roiled the times and lives of his characters.

A wonderful vacation read: a rich story that kept me as happy as a beach book, but with enough heft to make me feel quite noble.

[Veronica · Rating 4 out of 5]

I finished reading this yesterday, and today I learned that Barry Unsworth had died. He was a very talented historical novelist, although none of his other books, including this, matched up to Sacred Hunger, one of the best historical novels I've read.

That's not to say this isn't a good book, just that it doesn't have the intensity and drama of Sacred Hunger. It's about mercy and justice, much of it taken up with court cases, so inevitably it's less exciting and more contemplative. I didn't feel the different strands necessarily meshed together that well, and after a strong start with Sullivan, I was sorry we didn't see more of him in the rest of the book. But Erasmus' gradual acquisition of at least a hint of mercy under the influence of his love for Jane was quite convincing. I couldn't help wondering what a marriage between him and Jane would be like, so I'm rather sorry there won't be a sequel -- it did seem to be set up for one.

Unsworth is always good at adopting an 18th-century tone, and this novel, with its domestic settings, is positively Austen like -- especially the end. Although it can be read standalone, I highly recommend that you read Sacred Hunger first.

In the same parcel I received Hilary Mantel's Bring Up the Bodies -- but I decided to save it, and read this first in case it couldn't stand the comparison!

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

A worthy sequel to the excellent Sacred Hunger, I'm glad I didn't have to wait twenty years between books and that I was able to read them consecutively instead. Not quite as epic or grand in scale as its predecessor, it's still very, very good book, though I wonder how it would be received by someone who hadn't read the first one. As with the first, it is an accurate re-creation of late 18th-century England, and though less focused on slavery it does not ignore the subject entirely and effectively conveys the inherent corrupting influence that it has on those who profited from it.

Additionally, it illuminates the life of a coal miner in the north of England and how difficult, dangerous, and essentially stultifying such an existence was. Despite these oppressive subjects, the book remains entertaining and engaging due to the strength of the primary, as well as the secondary, characters.

One reservation I had going into it was that some reviewers felt that the budding romance between Jane Ashton and Erasmus Kemp somehow softened the villainy that Kemp represented so effectively in Sacred Hunger. Not that he was ever particularly evil, but his single-minded efforts for revenge and his inability to manifest any empathy toward another person made him a singular antagonist. Sort of a more complex and realistic Javert, from Les Miserable. However, I didn't find their relationship instrusive or unrealistic, and I accepted his growth, slight as it really is, as within the realm of possibility.

Highly recommended.

[DROPPING OUT · Rating 5 out of 5]

Almost twenty years and six novels and other writings separate The Quality of Mercy and Sacred Hunger. If Unsworth has planned a trilogy, I hope it appears sooner, given my age, rather than later. There is a darkness to Savage Hunger reflected in the slaving industry and the institution of slavery. The Quality of Mercy deals more with the legal and moral implications of the industry and institution.
Again, Unsworth delineates wonderfully memorable characters, both heroes and anti-heroes. Extended episodes in the vagaries of several characters add color and humor. His ear (or pen?) for dialogue is both uncanny and delightful/
Sacred Hunger shared the Booker Prize in 1992 with the English Patient, a book (and movie) I did not especially care for.
The Quality of Mercy deserves the Prize on its own merits. (Having tried unsuccessfully to read several of the previous recent winners, I'll be sorely disappointed in Unsworth does not receive the prize this year.)

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent sequel to Booker Prize winner 'Sacred Hunger', dealing with that novel's aftermath & consequences for the surviving characters & weaving-in new ones to move the underlying theme of the injustice of slavery...be it on a Jamaican sugar-plantation or in the dark of a Durham coalmine...would you rather cut cane or dig coal?...it's all exploitation of other human beings, isn't it?
Barry Unsworth has a thorough grasp of this period of England's history...the so-called Enlightenment of 18th c. Europe...when 7 year old children were sent down mines or into mills...or up chimneys! It is a sobering thought that 7 year olds in some unenlightened parts of the world are still ruthlessly exploited for profits by global companies...in 2020!!

[Tuck · Rating 5 out of 5]

this goes with booker prize "sacred hunger" and MUST BE READ IN ORDER (sorry, but is just must) , and this story follows up with the slave exporter and the mutineers. rich guy decides to buy a coal mine, so gets him some slaves of his own, and lets one of the mutineers free instead of hanging him. hence mercy.

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[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Unsworth is a good storyteller, and his prose is excellent. I did feel, however, that some of the characters is this book were rather cardboard. I also think that any book that ends with the phrase "dream of freedom" has failed itself.

[Alisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I moved immediately from Sacred Hunger to The Quality of Mercy, a much shorter book. I imagine Unsworth wrote this because readers demanded to know what happened to Erasmus Kemp after he got what he desired--the discovery of his ship and the arrest of the sailors for mutiny. I was more interested in what happened to the slaves who went from a life of freedom in Florida to becoming property once again, but hey, you can't have everything.

Yes, at the end of Sacred Hunger, Erasmus Kemp has obtained what he sought, but he's not as happy as he thought he'd be. The Quality of Mercy explores why this is so. This second novel takes us through the imprisonment and trial of the sailors; the escape of Sullivan, the fiddler sailor; Erasmus Kemp's continued building of his fortune and his falling in love. Unsworth also explores abolition in 18th century England.

The issue surrounding Kemp's insurance claim and the charge of mutiny against the sailors centers on whether the slaves are people or cargo. The crewman of The Liverpool Merchant could claim that they mutinied because their consciences forbid them from throwing living humans into the ocean; this is not the strategy they choose.

Sullivan escapes by chance. He simply exits with a group of musicians. He gets on the road to Durham to tell Billy Blair's family what happened to him after The Liverpool Merchant disappeared. In Durham, Sullivan decides to settle into a new life.

BUT Erasmus wishes to increase his fortune by taking control of a mine in Durham. Obviously, Kemp will encounter the one sailor who escapes punishment for his role in the mutiny. Now things begin to get interesting. Has love softened Erasmus? Is he able to give up his vendetta? How has his relationship with Jane Ashton changed him?

The Quality of Mercy centers on Erasmus and his desire for revenge, as well as the influence of Jane Ashton. We also get a different view of why Erasmus was so driven after his father's death. It isn't just about regaining the lost family fortune; it's also about the guilt he experiences over not being a support to his father during his last, desperate days. He admits to Jane that he wishes he had shouldered part of the burden, had been with his father in the dark on the night he died. As Erasmus confronts these feelings, his actions begin to change--gradually. Unsworth is realistic in showing a slow change in Erasmus, accompanied by much conflict. He's been one kind of man; can he become a different one?

SPOILER ALERT

We see the change in Erasmus when he decides to forgive Sullivan and not return him to custody. We also see the change when he gives up his quest for a piece of land and allows a poor mining family to use their land for their financial benefit and eventual rise into the middle class. These are not easy actions for Erasmus.

Jane Ashton is a realistically drawn character as well. She is attracted to Erasmus, she believes she loves him and could create a satisfactory marriage with him, but she also sees at times he is nearly possessed in his financial desires. She wonders if she can change him. She decides she can. I must admit the desire to scream at Jane, "You can't change him! Never marry a man because you think you can change him!"

Perhaps Unsworth could have written a third novel about Erasmus, the story of his marriage and whether Jane was able to change and save him. Though Unsworth leaves us with hope of positive change, there's no promise. I wish he'd explored Erasmus and Jane's marriage, whether it was happy, whether they were ultimately good for each other. The evidence in The Quality of Mercy suggests their relationship could go either direction.

[Joe Kraus · Rating 4 out of 5]

The opening scene here sets the agenda: Sullivan, a one-time mutineer on The Liverpool Merchant (the subject of the excellent prequel to this, Sacred Hunger) has managed to escape from prison. Penniless, he finds a drunken man asleep on the side of the road and “saves” him by rolling him away from possibly being hit by someone else.

Feeling he has earned some thanks, he rifles the man’s pockets and takes 9 shillings. Not far down the road, he stops and reconsiders. Can a man’s life be worth only nine shillings? Surely it’s an insult to settle for so little. So, he returns to the man and helps himself to double the sum (and a nice coat).

Sullivan’s logic may be twisted, but his naked calculation introduces the idea that runs throughout. We live in a world – our world being reflected in the 18th Century of the British Abolitionist moment – where we try to understand, in dollars or British pounds, the value of a life. That’s an uncomfortable calculation, but we make it all the time.

As this book insists, one person’s fortune is another’s misfortune. Erasmus Kemp was a mostly foppish young man in Sacred Hunger. He wanted to marry the girl of his fancy, and, to do so, he determined to join her in an amateur theatrical. Across the globe, his cousin Paris served as ship’s doctor on a terrifying slave ship…owned by Erasmus’s father.

Part of the point then (and it is a great novel, a Booker Prize winner, no less) was to contrast “drama.” We can live only the life we have in front of us. Another part, though, is the idea developed here: the suffering of those slaves made possible the financial power that allowed Erasmus to live as he did.

At the end of that novel, with the ship carried away by mutineers, Erasmus’s father kills himself – the slaves’ good fortune has been Erasmus’s bad. That seesaw rhythm of good and bad fortune persists here.

Sullivan, for instance, has determined to walk to the childhood home of his longtime friend Billy so he can tell Billy’s family how he died. It’s another moment of implicit conflict. In another setting, maybe, both men might have lived. But here, in the bookkeeper-god’s sense of the world, the accounts have to balance. And Sullivan, aware of his strange good fortune, wants to pay something back.

The central event of the novel is a trial in which the brother of the woman that Erasmus now loves tries to defend the mutineers. I’ll leave that outcome unsaid except to note that it begins a transformation for Erasmus. From that point, he tries to imagine a world without quite the same price tags on everything.

There’s a lot that satisfies in the way Unsworth revisits these characters in his sequel. If he’d asked me, I’d have advised against it, but he was a gifted enough writer to make this a sustained and even necessary inquiry into what life costs and how, maybe, we can come to see it in a new light.

This doesn’t have the coherence of Sacred Hunger, but it extends many of those questions. Definitely worth reading after you make time for the first one.

[Lucienne Boyce · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this book as I had so much enjoyed Sacred Hunger. Unfortunately I couldn't even finish it. I trawled through lots of press reviews, which were mostly very positive, thinking maybe I had been a "bad" reader and missed something...then I tried again...and still couldn't finish it. It seemed so ponderous: dialogue is split up by long paragraphs explaining the backgrounds or states of mind of the speakers, and worse still there were, near the start of the book, a couple of howling historical fiction bloopers of the sort you would expect from a beginner, which I found astonishing in a writer of this calibre. I'm referring to "info dumps" such as the attorney explaining that "according to Blackstone's Commentaries, that are presently being published, there are in this Year of Grace 1767 no fewer than one hundred and etc etc." (And 'Year of Grace'?) Or "In the last half-century there has been a tenfold increase in the tonnage engaged in the [slave] trade etc etc". Yes, all very interesting Facts but a) do we need them and b) must they be so clunkily included? But far worse were the passages of exposition that begin "As you know...". For example, the attorney again, "As you know, he is turning King's evidence..." But if Kemp already knows, why tell him?

I was also very unconvinced by the attraction between slaver Kemp and the sister of an abolitionist, which seemed a very clumsy way of complicating the relationship and demonstrating the opposing attitudes.

It was such a shame as there is so much to admire in the book. There is, as ever with Unsworth, some wonderful writing. There's lots of historical detail (though occasionally a bit too much for my liking) and scene setting. The opening is terrific, and I found the scenes with the working class characters such as Sullivan and Bordon much more convincing than many of those featuring Kemp and his circle. And, of course, it's a powerful theme. So, maybe I will give it another try one day and see if I get on any better!

[Ken Muir · Rating 2 out of 5]

Disappointing sequel to Sacred Hunger.

I liked Sacred Hunger (4 stars) and I enjoy Barry Unsworth's other novels, but several issues in this book did not work well for me.

In the early stages the characters and plot are too explanatory. As a follow-up to Sacred Hunger, written 20 years later, but only set 4 years after the events of that book, Unsworth has reasonably assumed that many readers of Quality Of Mercy will not have read Sacred Hunger. As a result the conversations and descriptions early on try to recapture the Sacred Hunger situation. But these are done in an all-to-obvious and unconvincing manner. You get discussions that begin like, "Why sir, if you recall our last meeting on this subject ... " and then the speaker recounts everything in a most unrealistic and unnatural style. In real life you would trust the other person's memory to be as good as your own and not to require this. It's quite obviously a plot device to bring the reader up to speed.

The pace of the plot is also strange and inconsistent. Reading on my Kindle I was about 45% of the way through the book. Next time I looked I was over 80%. I couldn't account for this gap. Was I really approaching the end already? Had enough happened to make this apparent leap acceptable? Obviously not for me. I felt it jarred considerably.

The new characters introduced in Quality Of Mercy are awkward additions. They are introduced, described and positioned in the tale, but their stories are often left unfinished. What exactly was their purpose? Other than to fill several pages.

I finished the book feeling really quite unsatisfied. As a standalone tale I think it is incomplete and erratic. It actually felt more like book two of a Sacred Hunger trilogy rather than a concluding sequel.

I do think Barry Unworthy writes well. His command of language does enable the characters to have individual lives and appearances in the reader's mind. All the more disappointing then that these identities are left unfulfilled in their stories and how these stories intermesh.

[Bucket · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this well enough, but my expectations were high after reading Sacred Hunger by this author, and they were not met at all. I didn't have the sense of immersion in the story and the characters' lives that I did with Sacred Hunger.

Also, while the moral issues were just as much of an interesting thicket here, they just weren't faced as squarely and faithfully as in Sacred Hunger. It felt like we just scratched at the surface of the interplay between justice and mercy.

I did enjoy the comparison between Erasmus and Ashton, and the ways that they are similarly self-centered and non-humanist, despite one being a ruthless businessperson and the other a vocal abolitionist. I wanted more from Jane, the only one who sees through these two, and wanted better for her in the end.

[Melanie Williams · Rating 4 out of 5]

An insightful follow up to 'Sacred Hunger' exploring social conditions in England in 1767. The return of Sullivan, the fiddler, is a welcome one, as he is an engaging character, and the new characters, the Bordon family, who live in a mining village, likewise arouse both compassion and admiration. Erasmus Kemp remains a complex mixture of bad and good intention (mostly not self-aware in terms of his bad ones!). 'Choice is wealth' is one viewpoint put forward, but Sullivan's experiences point to other things - luck, willing sacrifice, imagination, creativity and love. Barry Unsworth is a fine writer and I am inclined to read more of his novels.

[Molly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Old-fashioned historical novel. For me, that is a compliment in and of itself. It was so convincing that I searched to see if it was based on actual events (apparently not). It was compelling reading, and I could easily imagine the action as a mini-series. It succeeds at the level of interpersonal relations and emotions and psychology and motivations. It succeeds at the level of courtroom procedural. It succeeds at the level of social and economic history. It succeeds at the level of philosophy. You don't need to read the previous work written 19 years earlier in order to enjoy this one.
(I don't know how to convey that I have only read this book once, finished today...)

[Ian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cashing in on the success of the wonderful Sacred Hunger this is Unsworth's 'sequel' which popped out a mere twenty years later - that's a Kate Bush/Scott Walker level of pandering to public demand.

It was absolutely worth the wait. An equally complex and challenging novel which is no rehash, but uses the events of Sacred Hunger to jump off into new territory. Superb.