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The Mercies cover art

The Mercies

By: Kiran Millwood Hargrave
Narrated by: Jessie Buckley
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Publisher's Summary

A Richard & Judy Book Club pick summer 2021
The Sunday Times Bestseller and BBC Radio 2 Book Club Pick 2020

The storm comes in like a finger snap....

1617. The sea around the remote Norwegian island of Vardø is thrown into a vicious storm. A young woman, Maren, watches as the men of the island, out fishing, perish in an instant.

Vardø is now a place of women.

Eighteen months later, a sinister figure arrives. Absalom Cornet has been summoned to bring the women of the island to heel. With him travels his young wife, Ursa. In her new home, and in Maren, Ursa encounters something she has never seen before: independent women. But where Ursa finds happiness, even love, Absalom sees only a place flooded with a terrible evil, one he must root out at all costs....

For listeners of Circe and The Handmaid’s Tale, Kiran Millwood Hargrave's The Mercies is a story about how suspicion can twist its way through a community, and about a love that could prove as dangerous as it is powerful.

©2020 Kiran Millwood Hargrave (P)2020 Macmillan Publishers International Ltd

Critic Reviews

"Beautiful and chilling." (Madeline Miller, author of Circe)

"Took my breath away." (Tracy Chevalier, author of Girl with a Pearl Earring)

What listeners say about The Mercies

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  • Overall
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A fantastic, emotionally impactful story.

This story has so much emotional depth, and the performance by Jessie Buckley only makes it better. Highly recommend if you want a book that makes you think and feel.

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Haunting

This novel is evocative and will have you thinking about it long after you've finished. I can't get this book out of my head, and the narrator was perfect.

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What I thought it would be.

I found the story absorbing. However, nothing was unexpected. It was the haunting beauty of it that I loved. The cultural and historical details crafted a world and characters I could see clearly. I enjoyed the inexorable pull to the inevitable.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Great story

Nicely read, great story. The beginning was a bit drawn out as the writer took time to set the scene. I liked detailed descriptions of life in the 1600s. It's worth a read

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  • Overall
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    3 out of 5 stars

great narrator

I enjoyed this story although found it slow to get into due to the many characters to be introduced before all came together in the same place. the narrator did a good job with separating voices and accents for different characters.
The author has included a good amount of detail about the time period the story is set in without it overwhelming the characters stories.

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars

Hargraves paints pictures with her words

Amazingly written and narrated, Hargrave transports you into the harsh lives of the woman struggling to survive in the sexist world of religious zealots. it is a little slower than her first book that I fell in love with, the Deathless Girls, but a gripping read nevertheless

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