Search - Their Eyes Were Watching God (P.S.)

This is one of my all-time life favorites. It is very beautifully, and descriptively, written. I have written notes in the margins and underlined wonderful passages and shared them with my best friend, who did the same in my book when SHE read it -- This is a must read!

Don't judge this book by the movie. It did NOT do this book justice. It is more the WRITING that is wonderful rather than the story in itself, although the story is good. For example, something that sticks in my mind is when she described the passing of the year as something like this: It was a green time, then an orange time, and a white time and then a green time again.... written much more beautifully than I wrote it, but I remember that the words were so creative and descriptive. You could smell the scent of the dirt roads, and hear the hurricane's winds. Read it!

This novel is always cited as a seminal work so it's only proper to approach it with trepidation, on one's knees. But like classics started out of a sense of duty such as The Brothers Karamazov or Portrait of a Lady or The Great Gatsby, the story moves so briskly, the characters change so realistically, the style so engaging that we literally cannot stop reading it. It works as literature, as linguistic description of the varieties of black vernacular speech, as ethnography of poor and working class blacks in the Everglades in the 1920s, as feminist novel of a woman finding her own road. This is novel I began to observe Black History Month, 2008 but finished out owing to the captivation of a reader.

I loved this book! It was written several decades ago but the author's voice is contemporary and very sensual. I could almost smell the flowers, feel the sunshine, etc. I'd like to read others by her.

Beautifully written, to be read with the heart. I loved it.

Hurston's use of metaphor and symbolism is exquisite. Her ability to mold words into images is second to none. Even if it were not for the powerful story of Janie Crawford, the book would be an excellent work of poetic prose. Adding Janie's struggle for self-discovery just makes the novel all the more better.