Beloved
Ratings225
Average rating3.9
Wow. What an emotional ride. This is a haunting tale of Construction Era Cincinnati and the lives of former slaves there.
It's been a long time since I've gotten choked up reading fiction, but in one page towards the end, all the intensity (and boy was it intense) culminated in one giant emotional punch. I was engrossed the whole way; Morrison has such a talent for narrative, dialect, magical realism, and complex but relatable characters. Her style is so inimitable, and I loved the way that psychological deluges were complimented with fairly straightforward dialogue, and how the past was revealed slowly through the story-telling of others, too painful to be directly recounted by thos who loved it. I loved it but wow. Need a palate cleanser after that one. Real heavy.
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.
Download every one of her books she narrated. Even when the subject matter is dangerous and painful, like Beloved, her voice made me feel that warm, safe, storytelling feeling of having my mother or my elementary school librarian read to me as a child—that magic, storytelling feeling.
This is an unsafe ghost story. It will take you places you might not be ready to go, emotionally and historically. This is a reread, and I still feel worn out upon finishing it. But it is also a Great American Novel, and o say that without hyperbole. I was lucky enough to study it at Yale—my first read. Now I simply come to it the second time as a reader. I am enraptured and heart-rendered.
“To Sethe, the future was a matter of keeping the past at bay.”
This will be a short review, not because I have nothing to say about it, but because all of the other 5 star reviews here do a better job than I ever could at summarizing what makes this such a good read. It is a hard read and a dense read, and I will freely admit to anyone who asks that I very nearly DNF'd this book early on because I wasn't sure I was understanding it. My only advice for anyone who tries this book out is to stick with it. It starts making a small bit of sense, then a larger bit of sense, and then suddenly pieces start falling together and you're now seeing why this book is so highly regarded. It was a very weird, very satisfying feeling.
All I'll say about this book is that it's creepy and powerful and contemplative. It bounces the point of view around a lot, and sometimes you're in the past and sometimes you're not. All I can say is that notes are helpful.
This is a book that deserves a re-read.
I don't think I have the brain power to really understand the complexities of this book and kinda wish I spent a few months analyzing it in English class like Song of Solomon.
I recognize that this is an important work and powerfully written. I have really struggled with this book. I felt depressed, drained, and hopeless while reading it. I know that is part of it's importance -to convey the terrible life and trials slaves endured. I did not enjoy the book and I have no intention of revisiting it.
This book should be required reading on every high school curriculum....read it, get a study guide. Do it.
Haunting, this book is unlike anything else I've ever read. Some parts are confusing and disjointed, you may feel frustrated and lost. That's part of the point. Keep going. You have to keep going, even when nothing makes sense and you can't see your way.
It's always hard to know what to say about a classic, what with so much having already been said. I already knew quite a bit about the book, so it felt slow to me at first, but as it went on, it got much better, haunting in more than one sense of the word.
Woah. This one is going to stay with me for a long time.
BELOVED is the first book of Toni Morrison's that I've read. I listened to the audiobook which is narrated by the author. Listening to her words transported me into Sethe's life. This narrative about the heartbreaking brutality of slavery and the universal love of a parent was gut wrenching.
The poetic prose of the multiple perspective storytelling revealed the haunting layers of this deeply powerful novel.
A story that everyone should read.
In Beloved, Toni Morrison combines the reality of slavery, escape, and dealing with the trauma it brings with it, with magical realism. Her writing is rich with metaphors and vivid imagery that helps with the heavy and dark content. She portrays the truth in a way that is brutally honest, confronting you with people who do unspeakable things and witnessing such things. It's about how such terrible experiences can shape and change your life. How the memory of them will never fade and how they will continue to affect your life and decisions. It's about how terrible things can happen to you and how you can do terrible things as a result. It's a powerful reminder of the lasting and damaging effects of traumatic events and the strength it takes to confront them.
Personally, the awful events and descriptions in this novel were a bit too much for me, making it rather difficult for me to finish this book.
(I don't think I took away much from this book....I've been thinking all these years—it's 2016 now—that I have never read this book, and I didn't write down anything in my notes about it.)
So painful, so, so painful :´(
I mean... reading N.K.Jemisin's Fifth Season was painful, but that's Fantasy. I don't know how much Beloved is based on truth, but I can believe everything in it happened, somewhere, to someone... the cruelty, the... ignorance, the hatred...
I find it so hard to believe anyone could hate another person so much!
And not because this other person did something horrible to them, but because... because it's impossible to deny the truth that this other person is a human being, another person.
Humiliation, dehumanizing, degrading, abuse... the ability to abuse another human being without any consequences... all that just to make the other human being less than human.
And I am thinking about bullying, and domestic abuse, and abusive relationships... I read several years ago a book of short stories on “domestic discipline” - the movement among USonian Christians that the husband should be “manly” and “spank” his wife to keep her good and obedient. In it was a story of a woman who happened upon a feminist meeting, and when her husband found out, he beat her and then he raped her, because he had “shamed him in public”. The author says that it's not abuse because he loves her, and I fail to see any love there at all. Just the same hatred and dehumanizing people.
It is just so disgusting!
This was a fantastic book. I didn't find it as compelling as The Bluest Eye, but it was nonetheless a solid novel. I really liked the characters of Paul D and Denver, and found Beloved to be both incomprehensible and deeply unsettling. The voices of the characters here were vibrant and the commentary on slavery was brutal and heartwrenchimg.
An outstanding book! I can see why it won the Pulitzer Prize. Largely written in a poetic style, Toni Morrison captures the tragedy that was a part of every black person's life. It was a harrowing read at times but informative. I hope to read more of the author's works.
Not a read to rush through. Deep, heart wrenching and eye opening. Take the time to read and really digest this one. If you enjoy audio, the author reads this one and has a fantastic voice.
I read this book in lit class sophomore year of college and was immediate drawn into the story by Sethe and Denver, and the loss that surrounded their lives. [b:Toni Morrison 6149 Beloved Toni Morrison http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165555299s/6149.jpg 736076] is an incredible story-teller, and this work definitely showcases her talent. After reading the book, I read an interview with Ms. Morrison, where she said she got the idea from an article she found while doing research in library archives. There was a small “blurb” about a runaway slave who killed her children in order to prevent her owner from taking her and the children back to the plantation. I was very impressed that Morrison was able to take a 10 sentence article and develop it into a gripping ghost story.
Finally got around to reading a masterpiece by Morrison. What is there to say that hasn't already been said about Beloved?
It's fast, it's brutal. It's emotionally transcendent. Wow.
This is just a hard book, in all aspects. It's a challenging read, both thematically and textually. It's hard to define - what genre would you even call this brutal, magical, lyrical novel? It's almost too difficult to rate - did I enjoy reading this? No, not particularly. Do I understand that it is a masterful work of fiction? Absolutely. This feels like the type of novel that I wish I could have read in a college classroom, with a lively discussion to follow. Definitely a memorable read.