The Quality of Mercy [Hardcover]

"The Quality of Mercy" picks up the story of the author's Booker Prize-winning "Sacred Hunger" although if you haven't read the first book, you won't be greatly disadvantaged as the relevant story lines are explained. What you might miss out on is some of the feeling for a few of the main characters, most notably the Irish fiddler, Sullivan who, when this book picks up in spring 1767, has just escaped from prison where the remaining shipmates of the slave ship, the "Liverpool Merchant" await their trial of piracy. Slavery and abolition thereof remains a central theme of this sequel, but the book draws some poignant similarities with those in bondage due to poverty, and particularly those working in the coal mines of County Durham. The word "mercy" derives from the Latin for price paid or wages.

Unsworth offers four character threads by which he weaves his story together. Firstly there is the aforementioned Sullivan, who decides to venture north to Durham on foot to fulfill his pledge to his dead friend Billy Blair that he will visit Blair's family to relate the story of his passing. This then is the second thread. Billy's sister, Nan, is married with three sons and her husband and two oldest boys already work in the coal mine and her youngest, aged just seven, is about to start down the pit himself. The third character story is the mercenary Erasmus Kemp, whose ownership of the "Liverpool Merchant" after the death of his father, means that he is the one seeking legal recourse on the returned sailors. He is also now a banker and when an opportunity to loan a sum to the owner of a coal mine in, you've guessed it, Durham arises, he heads to the same location as the unfortunate Sullivan.

These three story threads fit nicely together. The fraying at the edges though comes in the form of a passionate anti-slavery campaigner, Frederick Ashton, and his sister, Jane, who develops an unlikely mutual attraction with the ideologically opposed Erasmus Kemp. Ashton's involvement in the story initially starts with a second case pertaining to the lost ship, but once this is resolved his focus switches to an entirely different slave-related case which, while affording the opportunity to make valid points about slavery and to expose the vested interests that the rich had in opposing abolition, seemed to me like one narrative thread too many. In the end, the Sullivan story rather falls by the wayside and he is such an engaging character that this is something of a loss to the book as a whole.

There's no denying the depth of historic research that has gone into this book and the descriptions of the life in the Durham coal mines is particularly poignant. Equally impressive is the quality of the writing. Unsworth frequently uses long, and sometimes complex, sentences which force the reader to slow down and do much to draw the reader into the slower pace of the past.

Apart from Jane and Sullivan, few characters offer much in the way of `mercy' and rather a lot in the way of self-interest. Then again, Jane, as an unmarried, privileged woman of the 1700s had greater scope for idealistic values, while poor old Sullivan never has much to lose in the first place.

It is seldom that movie sequels live up to the first story and so too, often with novels. It's a book that still has much to commend it, but if were to ask me to recommend only one Barry Unsworth book, then I'd still go with "Sacred Hunger".

Although it can stand alone, this excellent historical novel is a sequel to the Booker Prize Winner, "Sacred Hunger" which it is advisable to read first.

Set mainly in the London of 1767 and a Durham coastal mining village, there are four main plot strands which gradually interweave. The intense and somewhat humourless banker Erasmus Kemp is bent on bringing to trial in London the mutineers who made off with his father's ship, thus reducing him to financial ruin and suicide. Frederick Ashton, a wealthy man who finds the cause of anti-slavery gives meaning to his life, is equally determined to get the sailors acquitted on the grounds that they were driven to violence by revulsion over the practice of throwing sick slaves overboard to maximise insurance claims. Sullivan, an Irish fiddler press-ganged onto the ill-fated ship has managed to escape from gaol before the trial, and resolves to travel north to Durham to fulfil a pledge to explain to the family of a dead friend how he came to die after the mutiny. This family are the Bordens, headed by James who can barely repress his frustration over being forced to work underground, scarcely seeing the sunlight, and who dreams of buying a sheltered plot in the dene, a beautiful wooded ravine near the village. These main characters together with Frederick's spirited sister Jane, and James's son Michael are all developed very fully: Unsworth's striking observations on human nature are what make the book exceptional.

This well-paced and skilfully plotted novel with close attention to period detail provides a vivid insight into life during the early stages of the Industrial Revolution, when coalmines tended to have long galleries rather than deep shafts. Men swung down the shaft on ropes, with children on the their knees. Boys as young as seven worked for hours opening trapdoors to ventilate the mines, progressing to pulling heavy wooden containers loaded with coal. Partly through some lively discussions and absorbing court scenes, the importance of another form of exploitation, black slavery linked to the sugar trade, in the growth of prosperity of England at the time is also made very clear. Then there is the acceptance of the class structure in which rich and poor were breeds apart, although there were signs of change as the merchant class began to narrow the gap with the aristocrats, who took their wealth too much for granted, and a few workers could advance through ability and good fortune. It is hard to avoid uncomfortable parallels between the casual acceptance of injustice then and now, when we assume that we are more democratic and enlightened.

The story is also realistic in being a blend of good and harsh fortune. This is demonstrated most clearly in the alternating luck of Sullivan, who comes by money one minute (perhaps dishonestly) only to be robbed the next, or is locked up in the workhouse but then transported free to the next county which is his final destination. Overall, often through chance or fate, some characters come to a sad end while others flourish. Unsworth does not deal in sentimental happy endings for all those for whom he has aroused your sympathy, but neither is he ever bleak or depressing, just moving and thought-provoking.

As a writer now in his eighties, Unsworth's wisdom shines through - the results of a lifetime of reflection. The no doubt deliberately slightly oldfashioned, flowing and literary style, fits well with the period covered, although the dialect of the Durham miners also rings true, perhaps because Unsworth was born there.

To leave the last word to the illiterate Sullivan,

"It is the power of imaginin' that makes a man stand out, an' it is rarer than you might think, it is similar to the power of music."

The Quality of Mercy is a follow-up to the 1992 novel Sacred Hunger. The story begins in 1767 and has four main threads. The ship's crew has been brought back from Florida in chains are the men are in prison awaiting their trial for piracy. One of the group, the wonderful Sullivan, escapes from prison and makes his way north to find the family of his dead friend. Erasmus Kemp, a banker and son of the ship-owner, is seeking revenge. His business interests take him north to the Durham coalfields. The Bordens are Durham miners. Their working lives are circumscribed by the pit - working for long hours and for much of the year seeing no daylight. The father has a dream of owning some land and growing enough to feed his family. This is the land that Kemp quickly realises would be an ideal route through which to transport coal to the coast. There is also Frederick Ashton, a lawyer espousing the anti-slavery cause whose sister Jane is attracted to Kemp.

Such is the skill of Unsworth that all these characters are fully fleshed out and their lives and actions abut and overlap. The historical detail is finely researched but without becoming unwieldy or pedantic.

Life in 18th century England was harsh for many people and this book doesn't pull any punches - but the story is told vividly and unsentimentally. The "mercy" comes from some surprising sources and it is ultimately an uplifting and redemptive ending.

Some authors (such as Ian McEwan) write brilliant beginnings to their work. But Barry Unsworth writes brilliant endings. I have just re-read the last pages of Sacred Hunger and they are just as I remember them - sad and haunting. The ending to The Quality of Mercy is also unforgettable.

A class act.