The Mercies

No matter that Pastor Kurrtson believed their survival after the storm to be a miracle: now Maren thinks that the mercies of God would have been better spent drowning them all.

I picked this up when I learned that the plot of The Mercies was based on a true story: After a freakish squall off a remote Norse island wiped out all of a village's men in the 1600's, the women were able to rebuild their lives, living successfully on their own, until accusations of witchcraft attracted powerful men to bring the women back in line. Author Kiran Millwood Hargrave writes beautiful sentences and she uses them to richly convey this intriguing time and place. Even so, there's something kind of amateurish about the overall effort – too much melodrama (so not necessary in a story inherently laden with interest and tension), too many unnecessary details that are brought up and then forgotten, a plot that comes to a slow boil and then abruptly ends. This was a fast and easy read – I did enjoy the writing at the sentence level and what I learned about these actual events – but it didn't knock my slippers off.

From the first short chapter and the description of the storm, Hargrave's writing enchanted me:

And then the sea rises up and the sky swings down and greenish lightning slings itself across everything, flashing the black into an instantaneous, terrible brightness. Mama is fetched to the window by the light and the noise, the sea and sky clashing like a mountain splitting so they feel it through their soles and spines, sending Maren's teeth into her tongue and hot salt down her gullet.

And then maybe both of them are screaming but there is no sound save the sea and the sky and all the boat lights swallowed and the boats flashing and the boats spinning, the boats flying, turning, gone. Maren goes spilling out into the wind, creased double by her suddenly sodden skirts, Diina calling her in, wrenching the door behind to keep the fire from going out. The rain is a weight on her shoulders, the wind slamming her back, hands tight in on themselves, grasping nothing. She is screaming so loud her throat will be bruised for days. All about her, other mothers, sisters, daughters are throwing themselves at the weather: dark, rain-slicked shapes, clumsy as seals.

In the narrative that follows, initially told from the perspective of a young woman, Maren, who has lost her father, brother, and fiancé in the storm, the women of Vardø must learn to take over their lost men's chores – even going out fishing: a controversial decision that will divide the women irreparably, even if it saves them all from starving – and slowly, all of them find ways to carry on. Meanwhile, a new Commissioner has been appointed to oversee this wayward village – a Scottish witch-hunter whose skills might be needed according to whispered rumours surrounding the nature of that awful storm – and on his way north, this Absalom Cornet is able to procure both a ship and a wife in the city of Bergen. This wife, Ursa – a cloistered and pampered young thing who has never set foot outside the city of her birth and from whose perspective the narrative rotates – will be totally unsuited to life in a one room former boat shed (she has never made bread, let alone butchered an animal or stoked a peat fire), but a fortuitous friendship struck with Maren will see the two of them learn about life outside their own circles, and learn something about themselves as well.

Ursa is very close beside her, and Maren is not sure if the heat she feels comes from the fire, or her friend's body. She imagines leaning against her, resting her head on Ursa's shoulder. It would not be out of place, not beyond the intimacies they have already shared. But Maren is unsure whether she could rest her head so close to Ursa's, breathe in her sweet smell, feel the brush of Ursa's soft skin against her own dry forehead, and not turn her mouth towards her.

As historical fiction, Hargrave does a really admirable job of capturing life in both the remote fishing village and Finnmark's more “civilised” centres. And as feminist fiction, Hargrave credibly explores the limited options open to women in this world; neither Maren or Ursa truly has control over her own life and weak women seek power by aligning themselves with the church. I liked that Hargrave included an indigenous Sámi character, Diina, whose long-accepted pagan practises will make her a target of the witch-hunt:

I remember once when runes gave you comfort, when sailors came to my father to cast bones and tell them of their time left to come. They are a language, Maren. Just because you do not speak it doesn’t make it devilry.

All of this makes for a strong and interesting framework, but again, there's something amateurish in the overall package. So many seemingly important details have nothing to do with the overall plot: Why did Ursa's sister need to be sickly? Why was Diina's baby not developing appropriately? Why was the sea captain shocked that Ursa didn't remember him visiting their home when she was a child? Why add all of this (and so much more) if it doesn't affect anything in the end? Even so, there was authentic tension in this plot (there is a witch-hunt after all), I did like Hargrave's sentences, and time and place were captured beautifully. I'm not unhappy to have picked this one up.