Friday, 23 February 2007

Beloved by Toni Morrison

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket From the Publisher (Vintage Books - An Imprint of Random House Inc)

Staring unflinchingly into the abyss of slavery, this spellbinding novel transforms history into a story as powerful as Exodus and as intimate as a lullaby. Sethe, its protagonist, was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. She has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. And Sethe’s new home is haunted by the ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved. Filled with bitter poetry and suspense as taut as a rope, Beloved is a towering achievement.

Someone recommended I try this book after I stated I couldn't really get into The Bluest Eye (Though I did finish it). This one is definitely a better book but I still found the same problem in parts. I would have to read and reread certain paragraphs in order to make sense of them and even then at times I fell short of doing so.

This book is just filled with so many intense emotions and covers the best and worst of human traits. The characters are brilliantly written and it is one of those books you can easily become lost in and it's also a book that will stay with you for a long time. The content is both haunting and tragic as would be expected with a book covering slavery and racism.

I know I want to reread it at some point in the future and maybe even try The Bluest Eye again too.

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