Synopsis

Synopsis

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Toni Morrison’s Beloved is a spellbinding and dazzlingly innovative portrait of a woman haunted by the past.

Sethe was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. She has borne the unthinkable and not gone mad, yet she is still held captive by memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. Meanwhile Sethe’s house has long been troubled by the angry, destructive ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved.

Sethe works at beating back the past, but it makes itself heard and felt incessantly in her memory and in the lives of those around her. When a mysterious teenage girl arrives, calling herself Beloved, Sethe’s terrible secret explodes into the present.

Combining the visionary power of legend with the unassailable truth of history, Morrison’s unforgettable novel is one of the great and enduring works of American literature.

Review

Beloved by Toni Morrison

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I appreciated this one, though it wasn’t all of what I expected. Would make for a good book club read.

The Story
I loved the dive. This plunge right into the story, always such a signature of Morrison into the middle of people’s lives. As it’s happening. Minimal and yet revisited context making much sense in a subtle way later on to the point of near-forgotten. As it’s chaotic. Flaws and all.

I loved the sentiment. Especially starting off.

However I felt it to be a bit too meandering for my taste, especially after the second-half. The level of detail is typically what I enjoy about Morrison’s way of capturing the insightful and mundane. But I found myself speed reading and skimming around. I wasn’t caring for the shifting perspective and magical realism in the way that it was portrayed. I couldn’t tell if it was intentional or unintentional disassociation or supportive as to what was truly going on in the story.

The Writing
I’m always captivated by how Morrison takes the raw, unpolished, less politically correct dynamics of daily life to tell life as it is and the writing is certainly reflective of this notion.

Loved the vernacular, notably the dialogue.

Loved the unstructured, poetic nature of the passages near the end.

Favorite Lines
“A man ain’t nothing but a man. But a son? Well, now, that’s somebody.”

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