Beloved
1987 • 362 pages

Ratings246

Average rating3.9

15

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.

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Series

Featured Series

2 primary books3 released books

#1 in Beloved Trilogy

Beloved Trilogy is a 3-book series with 2 primary works first released in 1987 with contributions by Toni Morrison and Patricia Potter.

Beloved
Paradise
Jazz

Reviews

Popular Reviews

Reviews with the most likes.

December 4, 2018

It's generally an engaging book, but the ending is so underwhelming and sort of felt out of place. Disappointing since most of it is brilliant.

May 28, 2023

Haunting and beautiful.

July 21, 2022

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