Search - Beloved

I didn't care for this book and I couldn't summon up the desire to even finish reading it. Heavy use of symbolism. Incoherent and unrealistic at times. Perhaps the author did not intend for the book to be realistic but I believe it is important when you are representing an historical time period and the treatment of slaves. Completely turned me off reading anything else by Morrison.

A complicated and painful book to read. I saw the movie before reading the book and think it might have been better the other way around.

It is a view of slavery that most whitefolk (of which I am one) don't want to remember and surely do not understand the depths of the depravity that the black people suffered at the white hands of our ancestors. I think that it would be a good book for high schoolers to read, even in class for discussion...this is information about an era in our country that people tend to gloss over. This book is not glossy.

A good read but be prepared to do the work of staying with the author and the characters...it's a bit of a challenge.

I found it hard to read this book - the symbolisim is layed on with a crowbar - but it was at least more interesting to me than most of Tony Morrison's work. I found the character of Beloved to be the most interesting of the lot.

If you generally like Tony Morrison's work, I think you would like this one. If you're looking for lite reading, this is not your book.

Like a good curry, Beloved is a taste of powerful storytelling. Toni Morrison’s poetic language immerses the reader in the story of Sethe, a slave who escaped to Cincinnati, Ohio but not free from slavery’s haunting effects. The house she shares with her sole remaining child Denver born during the escape is haunted by the ghost of her baby. Things come to a boil when Paul D, a fellow slave and escapee from Sweet Home, and a mysterious young lady named Beloved arrive. Rather than chronological exposition, the characters’ experiences in slavery are related through twists and turns of flashbacks, amplified by the prism of what we would now call post-traumatic stress disorder. Based on the true story of Margaret Garner, Toni Morrison’s fifth novel was a great choice for Black and Women’s History Months from the list of 1001 books you must read before you die.