The Mercies -

Kiran Millwood Hargrave

Little, Brown and Company

2020

336 páginas

11h 12m

ISBN-13: 9780316529259

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.

Resenhas (3)

5 (Perfeito)

Uma surpresa e um sopro de inovação nas ficções históricas

"The Mercies", da britânica Kiran Millwood Hargrave, traz a história de duas mulheres em uma pequena ilha do nordeste da Noruega no século XVII, quando a caça às bruxas toma forma no país escandinavo. Foi uma surpresa ler um livro de ficção histórica que foge às concepções tradicionais e que traz, do início até o final, uma descrição tão bem feita que lendo-a no calor do Rio de Janeiro, quase sinto o frio glacial das terras norueguesas. Um sopro de inovação no gênero e uma ótima experiência.