The subject of this book - essentially a witch hunt - reminded me too much of accounts I have read of other true life events. These accusations never turn out well for the women involved and this was no exception. It is a dark and despairing tale and I was in no mood for this at the moment so skimmed much of it.

Not my normal genre, but I really enjoyed this book. When the men in the village are lost to a storm at sea the women must come together and learn to do things they previously weren't allowed to do. Maren lost her fiance to the see and her character is really well written. Ursula has been married off and I loved reading about her character. The whole story captured me and pulled me back in time and into an era and country I wasn't familiar with. The writing is superb as are the descriptions and the characters fully developed and real. I look forward to reading more from this author.

This is the first book I have read by this author but it will not be my last. Absolutely brilliant read with amazing characters and superb written story. Would definitely recommend

I didn’t know that I had an itch for Northern Norwegian 17th century witch trials but my word I enjoyed this book. Cleverly hooked onto real life politics and witch trials of the time, we meet city girl Ursula and island dweller Maren. Ursula has been married off to a man posted to the far Northern islands, while Maren has lost her betrothed in a storm, along with just about every man in their village. As their stories intertwine it is a tense and touching tale of an all female community, the internal and external forces which may pull them apart and the relationship between Ursula and Maren.

With thanks to netgalley and Pan Macmillan for an ARC in consideration of an honest review.

A harrowing novel based in 1617, in a remote village of the coast of Norway a fishing boat capsized killing all the men from the village.
The woman of the village now have to fend for themselves until a Stranger enters the village 18 months after the men have lost their lives.
Absalom Cornet arrives from Scotland with his wife Urse and soon wants to take control of the village and woman.
This is a highly compelling novel set around the true events around Vardò in the sixteen hundreds.
A truly breathtaking novel.

Based on true events in 17th Century, this story gives us a snapshot of how people lived and what they believed. Almost all the male inhabitants of a Norwegian village are lost one dreadful night and the story shows us the strength of the women who were left to carry on.
If you then add into the mix, the belief in witchcraft and burning at the stake for such crimes the story takes a darker turn.

I enjoyed this book and the images it painted of life in 17th Century Norway and would recommend it.

Another incredible triumph for Kiran Millwood Hargrave. This is an intense, emotional and vivid telling of events taking place in the 1600’s involving witch trials and a community of women.
When an incredible and unbelievable storm claims the lives of 40 men in the community, the woman are forced to act in order to survive. Fishing, slaughtering and working together is all they have until a new man is appointed leader of the community. Cornet is Scottish, ambitious and cruel. He sets into motion a set of witch trials that rock the community and country.
Amongst this community is Maren, who befriends Cornet’s new wife, Ursula. They form an immediate and intense bond, relying upon each other for help, support and over time, love.
The history of this book is true and the author holds nothing back in re-telling of the cruelty shown to witches, the lurid behaviours of men towards women or the love between Maren and Ursula.
It is tragic, bold and incredibly well written. Atmospheric, encouraging the reader to feel a part of Vardø and to feel fear and smell burning bodies. To feel the heat between Ursula and Maren and to rejoice when their love is shared. Yet the tale is tragic and events conspire against them, as does Cornet.
This is one to savour and enjoy. Incredible book by the awe-inspiring Kiran Millwood Hargrave

On Christmas Eve, 1617, the sea around the remote Norwegian island of Vardø is thrown into a reckless storm. As Maren Magnusdatter and the other village women folk watch forty fishermen, husbands and brothers, lose their lives to the sea. The women’s lives are changed forever in an instant. The women have to look after themselves alongside dealing with their grief, in what in 1617 is very much a man’s World. The women start to move forward with their lives deciding to go out and catch fish for themselves in the summer months but little did they know this would be the start of another battle for them as Absalom Cornet arrives with his new wife in Vardo making it his missions to show the women that God is what they really need to survive and anyone who doesn’t conform will be outed as a witch.

This book is inspired by the real events of the Vardø storm and the 1621 witch trials. It is a story of survival, relationships, friends and family, and ultimately what people will do to survive. This book creates a perfect atmosphere of how I imagine the bleakness of a remote Norwegian Island would have been in the 1600s and the harshness of the tasks that needed to be carried out just to survive. The author brings all the characters alive, you can feel their grief, their hatred, confusion and ultimately love as no one is beyond suspicion. A great and emotional winter read.

17th C coastal Norway is a grim place with whole villages solely dependent on fishing. On Christmas Eve 1617, a freak wave kills all the men of Vardø island, bar 13 - elders, babies and very young boys. So the village has to survive solely by the efforts of the women. The disaster and its result has not escaped the attention of the authorities. An island run by women is considered to be a den of iniquity, godlessness and maybe even witchcraft. The local Lensman appoints a commissioner from the Orkneys, Absalom Cornet, choosing his wife Ursa almost in passing. Every woman is under close scutiny, old enmities, jealousy and religious zeal put everyone at risk.
Good, if bleak, story with too many “digestive details”, things churning in stomachs, used for the setting of an uneasy scene.
The book’s language is a slow, cold, roiling wave of poetry, a going over things in an age-old rhythm weaving in toil and season and superstition. An emancipation from necessity culled by superstition.

This was a very disturbing story based on historical facts. It is set during a period of history when people who didn't follow strict religious concepts were considered to be witches. With no factual evidence they were found guilty and burnt at the stake. This particular witch hunt took place in Norway and was mainly men preying upon women.

I wasn't previously familiar with this author but am so glad I chose it. To be honest, it had me at the description involving a remote Norwegian location on Christmas eve, then the idea of a witch hunt.
I loved the raw descriptions of what life was like then and the bleakness of the characters' existences. The story evolves beautifully and brutally and is one that will stay with me for quite a time to come.

The Mercies is a stunningly told story of forbidden desire, sisterhood and suspicion. Kiran Millwood Hargrave captures the isolation and determination of Maren as she struggles to navigate the insidiousness and danger of gossip, fear and superstition in small-village life. This is a story that keeps on building until the very end, sweeping you through the book like the sea that beats at Finnmark.

The Mercies by Kiran Millwood Hargrave

This couldn't really be described as a cheerful read. People live a miserable enough life in this cold northerly Norwegian hamlet in 1620 but then all the active men are drowned by a huge storm while out fishing. A little later, there's a young girl sold into marriage and hubby turns out to be a witch finder so some of the poor women then get burned at the stake for trying to manage without the men. Everyone has a sort of guttural Norwegian name, everyone smells and there are few consolations!

The redeeming feature I suppose is that the author is writing about some real events and how James I managed to export his misogynist obsession with women and witches to Norway. There was a recorded storm in 1621 and there was some witch hunting subsequently but overlaying those events with 21st-century preoccupations might be a challenge for some readers.

The trick in historical fiction is to try and get inside the heads of people and what it must be like to live in the day you choose to write about but at times I got the impression we were just talking about a hippie commune being oppressed by the patriarchy. Ursa, or Ursula, is the traded wife and her husband, Absalom Cornet, is the witch finder but although everybody lives seems to live in cow sheds he gets drunk with his mates in some social setting, brutally consummates the marriage and doesn't seem to have a genuine motive for wanting to burn women at the stake! The most we get is some kind of political ambition.

The women, widowed by the storm, finally get things together and bury the dead, slaughter the odd reindeer and even go fishing. Oddly, there's stuff about the emergent leader of the group wearing trousers and that leads off into gay relationships between the women which, then by implication, could explain some of the witch accusations. I couldn't help feeling that was all a bit of an addition to the documentary facts.

It is probably what happens when people are ruthlessly oppressed and accused but most of the women do not resist the witch finder and also start pointing the finger themselves. Ultimately, the one who is in love with Ursa takes revenge on Absalom and takes the blame for the crime but it's not exactly love conquers all!

I didn't warm to this book or get a greater understanding of what happened at the time and I found the style and description, kind of pseudo-Gothic, rather ponderous. Having said that, some readers might like it as a kind of linked text to read with the Handmaid's Tale and it might look quite striking on TV so other readers may well have a different take.

This book was really thought provoking and painted a real description of the times. The characters were great too. Brilliant.

This is an absolute triumph of historical fiction which left me enraged, frustrated and tearful, but also feeling proud of the resilience and strength shown by a small group of women to endure and fight against the restrictions and prejudices placed upon them by religiously zealous men, hungry for power and control.
The story centres on the devastating consequences for a group of women left in abject shock following the loss of 40 of their menfolk after a Christmas Eve storm in Vardo, Finnmark in 1617.
One of these women is Maren whose father, brother and husband-to-be were all lost in the storm. A few of the women – including Meren and her Sami sister-in-law Diinna - fall back on the indigenous people’s pagan traditions as they attempt to come to terms with their grief whilst the majority look to the local minister and the kirke. This religious division, alongside envy and power struggles, leads to a chain of events, skilfully exacerbated and manipulated by a new arrival, that go much further than perhaps the inhabitants expected …
Grief turns to suspicion, hatred and a desire to blame as a power-hungry religious zealot, Absalom Cornet, arrives from Scotland to become the Commissioner of Vardo. He has aspirations to make a name for himself and has been chosen for his prowess as a witch finder. With him, he brings his young Norwegian wife, Ursa, who was given to him by her father in an arranged marriage.
Athough Ursu is lost, lonely and fearful of her husband in this cold and harsh place, she has an inner strength and resilience that is truly admirable as she endures, defends and determines to follow her heart. She soon meets Meren and forms a close bond with her, each gaining strength, love and support from the other: their relationship is heartachingly tender and devastatingly beautiful and hopeful.
The writing is visceral, earthy, painful and powerful, imbuing the story with the harshness and brutality of the events, the relentless and unbearable journey towards division, accusation and fervour and the truths that come too late.
The women of this story will stay with me: women who fight for power in a male-dominated society; women who betray their own out of envy and to be seen to conform; women who follow their hearts despite the danger; and, women who are falsely accused of witchcraft and murdered to assuage a desire for power and control.

Vardo, Norway, Christmas Eve 1617, a remote northern settlement where a storm of unusually immense and vicious proportions, completely wipes out the menfolk in this small fishing community, leaving the womenfolk bereft and without the means to provide for themselves.

Eighteen months later, the women have become adept at catching fish and are finally able to look after themselves, but their world is about to be turned upside down with the arrival of Absalom Cornet, a God-fearing man who has been summoned from his home in Scotland to bring the women of Vardo to heel, and to ensure that they too are God fearing, and worship at the local church, but primarily, unbeknownst to these women, he’s also a witch finder!

The main protagonists are Maren, born and bred in Vardo, who lost her father and brother in the storm, and Absalom’s wife Ursa, a woman of genteel breeding, born and brought up in the city of Bergen, who is trapped in a loveless arranged marriage. Despite the fact that they come from completely different backgrounds, Maren and Ursa soon form a bond, and find solace in each other’s company, but the whole village has much to fear where Absalom is concerned, including his wife.

The writing is beautiful, often crude, echoing the privations of an impoverished community at the mercy of a ghastly climate. The reader is overwhelmed by the bleak environment and the conditions it imposes. Knowing ‘The Mercies’ was based on the real events of the Vardo storm and the witch trials of 1621, makes it even harder to read, such is the brutality used against those accused of witchcraft, but it’s hauntingly beautiful and highly recommended!

The Mercies is a chilling historical drama set in early 17th century Norway. A remote fishing community is left devastated when the men of the village drown following a storm. Left to pick up the pieces, the women folk await the arrival of a Scots born commissioner who brings with him his gentle bride. The community already divided by jealousy and grief are further conflicted when two women are accused of witchcraft. This is a story based on fact and real events and set in a time when had no rights in the eyes of the law. A thought provoking read. Thanks to Netgalley for the arc.

Following a freak fishing accident in 1617 the women of a remote village in Norway are left to fend for themselves.
The women survive but how is that possible without men to control them? Surely there must be witchcraft involved. Absalom Cornet has some experience of witches and he goes to the village taking his new bride with him. Ursula Cornet had no idea that women could be so independent and starts to find some inner strength of her own. She forms a special relationship with Maren, a local woman who had lost her betrothed in the fishing accident.
It is a story of love, hope and betrayal which kept me up way into the night so that I could finish it.

Atmospheric and lyrical! I was so excited to learn Kiran Milwood Hargrave had turned her hand to Adult fiction and her debut delivered in spades. An eerie tale that will live in people's memories long after the final.page. I cant wait to see what she does next!

A beautifully written emotion packed story. The descriptions of the people, scenery and activities were so real I was there with the women in the village smelling as well as seeing it all. This is a story based on the true events that happened in 1617 in the small fishing village of Vardø, in the north of Norway. This village was decimated by a violent storm at sea which killed the men leaving a village of women to learn to fend for themselves. The King of Norway wants complete abeyance to the Lutheran faith and establishes Absolom Cornet, a Scottish witch hunter, to live and rule in the village In order to bring the complete village to the true religion.
The story is a chilling persecution of innocents by pious Zealots, covering male domination, superstitions, witchcraft and feminine love. I found the story full of intense rich descriptions covering the mode of living in the village and the vindictive pettyness of the Christian women.
The story centres around the lives of Megan, Ursula and Absolom and has totally unexpected ending.
A captivating, easy to read, highly emotional historical story which I highly recommend to others.