The Quality of Mercy
Sacred Hunger Series, Book 2
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- اطلاعات
- نقد و بررسی
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نقد و بررسی
January 16, 2012
Unsworth’s sequel to his 1992 Booker Prize–winning Sacred Hunger centers on a 1767 London court case resulting from the slave ship mutiny of the previous novel. Pretrial maneuvering, in-court manipulation, out-of-court negotiations, and post-trial reverberations are shown through the eyes of dedicated abolitionist Frederick Ashton; determined ship owner Erasmus Kemp; captured crew members who would say anything not to be hanged; and lawyers and underwriters who would do anything to protect their interests, along with even other perspectives. The action begins when the Irish fiddler Sullivan flees Newgate Prison, journeying north to the colliery village where a deceased shipmate’s family resides, including a coal miner father who dreams of working above ground and a seven-year-old preparing to work below. Kemp arrives in search of new commercial opportunities. Wryly, and with Austenesque delicacy, Unsworth presents the intricacies of love, competition, and other timeless human emotions, as well as 18th-century law (if slaves thrown overboard were already dying, the insurance company was not liable for lost property, etc.). Having invented his own brand of historical fiction, characterized by research, imagination, and a literate narrator equally adept at penetrating a society’s values or an individual’s heart, Unsworth creates a novel that works both as period piece and indictment of industrial capitalism. If this sequel lacks the freshness of its predecessor, it succeeds in presenting a compelling picture of a transitional moment in English history, not to mention in the development of the English character. Agent: Sheil Land Associates, U.K.
Amid the rising economic disparities of mid-eighteenth-century England, a vagrant Irish fiddler wanders to a northern mining village, and a wealthy industrialist demands legal restitution for the ruined slave ship on which the fiddler once sailed. This sophisticated novel explores the conflicting values of a rapidly evolving industrial society, and David Rintoul delivers the elaborately detailed narrative at a crisp pace. Rintoul provides restrained elegance for the aristocratic abolitionist who confronts the well-heeled ship merchants in court and employs a delicate touch with the colorful characters, including the poor mining families. During some of the ornate dialogue, Rintoul's subtlety fails to differentiate the characters, but his reading is otherwise well suited to this urbane story. N.M.C. © AudioFile 2012, Portland, Maine
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