The Quality of Mercy

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.

January 1, 2012
Unsworth returns to themes of greed and human rights in this potent sequel to his 1992 Booker Prize–winning novel Sacred Hunger. Set in 1767, two years after that epic novel on the British slave trade, this is a slimmer, somewhat less ambitious book. But it still has plenty of intellectual heft; Unsworth remains obsessed with exploring the rationalizations and conditional ethics that permit elites to abuse laborers. Erasmus Kemp, one of the lead characters of Sacred Hunger, returns here with two ambitions: to receive financial compensation from the slaves lost on his father's ship, and to acquire a coal mine that survives in part on the backs of child labor. Kemp is on the wrong side of history in both cases, but Unsworth doesn't apply the modern reader's moral certainties to his characters. For instance, Kemp's legal adversary is Frederick Ashton, an avowed abolitionist, but Ashton bristles at the notion of equality among races; he simply wants black slaves to be free to return to their homelands. A series of lighter subplots run under that main dispute. Sullivan, a crew member from the Kemp family's slave ship, escapes from prison and goes on a picaresque Grand Tour of England's underclass; Michael Bordon, born into a mining family, considers a way to acquire his family's freedom; and Kemp attempts to woo Ashton's sister, even though their politics diverge. Unsworth's knowledge of British history, from abolitionism to mining to courts and commerce, is assured and convincing, as is his ear for dialect; his characters' places on the class ladder become explicit whenever they speak. The novel's closing pages feel thinner as Unsworth ties together various plot threads, but the message about how much effort is required to effect social justice never feels didactic or unearned. A sturdy historical novel with fewer pages than Sacred Hunger but no less nuance.

(COPYRIGHT (2012) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

April 1, 2012

In 1753, the Liberty Merchant, a slave ship bound for Jamaica, tossed 83 Africans overboard on the pretext of illness and insufficient water available for them. In reality, the ship owner hoped for an insurance settlement for his loss of "property." Years later, this event becomes the subject of a court case in which the owner's son, set on avenging his father's lost fortune and eventual suicide, runs the mutinous crew to ground in the Florida Everglades and returns them to England for trial. In this pursuit, he is conflicted by a growing attachment to Jane Ashton, whose brother Frederick, an ardent abolitionist, is on the other side of this case, and he is equally distracted by his pending acquisition of a coal mine in which he plans to introduce new methods of efficiency for increased productivity and profits. VERDICT Recalling the Amistad and the song "Amazing Grace," Unsworth's (Land of Marvels) finely crafted plot brings together a vivid cast of seamen, miners, and landowners at a moment in history when crimes of property were considered more serious than crimes against persons and a more enlightened future lay just around the corner. Highly recommended.--Barbara Love, Kingston Frontenac P.L., Ont.

Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from January 1, 2012
Highly regarded historical novelist Unsworth's new novel is the long-awaited sequel to his Booker Prizewinning Sacred Hunger (1992). In that novel, we saw the sailors of a slave ship bound for the New World mutiny when some of the crew tossed live humans overboard, and the mutineers took refuge in Florida, where they lived for many years until they were tracked down by the ship owner's son and were brought to England for trial. The year now is 1767, and Unsworth, true to form, shows appreciation for the mind-sets and physical features of life in the past but, at the same time, supports his interest in commonly held societal ideas of the time as well as new ones surfacing in the law. Thematically, his new novel is about the downtrodden versus those in positions of overlordship; specifically, he draws our interest to a London courtroom as the mutineers from the previous novel are brought to trial, and, with ingenuity, he connects that situation to coal-mine activity in the north of England as emerging ideas of property and personal rights are played out in that dark, brutal world. The way this talented author elaborates the plot will ensure that readers will be eager to follow its challenging course.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)