by reading my first toni morrison i believed i would ascend into a higher plane. and i was right.i would like to apologize to all of the dinners i ruined with friends, my boyfriend, family, and other loved ones because i could not stop talking about the brilliant, dark, vibe-ruining concept of this book.this was my first toni morrison, my first new favorite of the year, and the first time in a long time i've been completely dumbstruck while reading.beautifully written, cleverly constructed, popu...

The brutal truth, brilliantly written. A mother hanging from a tree, the vile debasement of a nursing mother, scars so deep from whipping that they make a design of a tree on a woman’s back, a bloodied dead baby, the ultimate symbol of how truly horrific slavery was. These are some of the images that I will remember long after reading this book. This was not an easy book to read and it’s not one I can say was enjoyable in the strictest sense of the word, but I can say that I appreciated every wo...

‘Something that is loved is never lost.’Every so often a book comes along that shakes you until you feel you might break open and, worn out in the aftermath of emotional devastation, you recognize how important and impactful storytelling can be. Storytelling carries memories on into the future though, as is the case of Nobel Prize winning novelist Toni Morrison’s Beloved, memories can often be very painful to revisit and can still haunt and harm in the present and future. Such are the horrors of...

Updated, August 2019: RIP, Toni Morrison Over the past 15 years, I’ve tried a couple of times to read Toni Morrison’s epic, Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about murder, guilt, ghosts and the brutal, complex physical and psychological legacy of slavery.Something about the dense, poetic prose and the elliptical nature of the storytelling made it impenetrable. After a chapter or two, I’d give up, perplexed. And I’ve read William Faulkner and Virginia Woolf! This made Oprah’s Book Club? I’m so glad I ...

RIP, Beloved Toni Morrison! You changed the way I read! Sometimes reality is too painful to address in plain, simple narrative. Sometimes truth has to be approached in circling movements, slowly getting to the heart of the matter through shifting, loosely linked stories that touch on the wound ever so lightly, without getting too close too fast. Sometimes I read to escape my reality, only to find myself in a universe endlessly more complicated, more painful, more difficult to understand and fo...

This is one of those rare and beautiful books that begins as if it's written in a code you have to crack. You have the sense early on that you've missed some vital shred of information and it's these perceived black holes that engage your attention on an ever deepening level. As is the case in the best detective novels maddening clues needed to complete knowledge are scattered deftly at every turn. The past is a constant illuminating presence in every present moment. Beloved exploits brilliantly...

"BelovedYou are my sisterYou are my daughterYou are my face; you are meI have found you again; you have come back to meYou are my belovedYou are mineYou are mine" It's 6 o'clock in the morning and I have finished with one of the best books I have ever read in the course of my short life. I am sleepless and I need a moment to organize my thoughts, sort out my feelings. Come back to real life. But I can't. A part of me is still with Sethe and her daughters, Denver and Beloved at 124. A part of ...

Beloved is the Great American Horror Novel. Sorry Stephen King: evil clowns and alcoholic would-be writers are pretty creepy, but they just got nothing on the terrifying specter of American slavery! I literally got chills -- physical chills -- over and over while reading this book. To me, great horror has the scary element (e.g., a ghost) and then, lurking behind it, something so vast and evil that trying to think about it can make you go insane. Beloved did that! It worked as horror! And then a...

There are reasons why Toni Morrison was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. Beloved may be the biggest one. The structure is a ghost story about a woman who killed her own children rather than see them be dragged back from freedom to live a life of slavery, and how the guilt of that act comes back to haunt her. But the real payload here is a portrayal of the slave existence, how it seeps into every pore, affects every emotion, defines one’s world view, how one values education, how willing o...

I don't give books low marks lightly. If anything, I am prone to being carried away by the author's enthusaism and rate books more highly than they deserve. I am an aspiring author, myself, and that also leads me to be kind to the books.That being said, I really hated this book.I like fantasy and magical realism. I find the dreams and allegories that live just underneath the skin of the world we can more readily see and touch endlessly fascinating. I like my stories intense and emotional, and I ...