Reviews for Beloved

The average rating for Beloved based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2009-01-26 00:00:00 Sara Tim 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 also, even more, it worked as great American literature. I don't think in these terms too often, but it does seem like there's such a thing as national novels. I'm sure there's a better, fancier way to talk about what I mean, which is books that are so specifically about "The American Experience" that being an American reading them feels very special and intimate, as if it's a book about my own family. That feels like a strange and dorky thing for me to say, but it's how I felt. Slavery is such an essential part of all our heritage that reading this treatment of it felt very personal, like listening to secrets about your grandparents. Beloved really worked on something at the heart of the American experience, and while I don't usually think in those terms this book forced me to, which is one of many reasons why it did affect me so much. I feel like Morrison has a certain reputation and associations that are completely at odds with what her work is actually like. Maybe it's the Toni-with-an-i thing; it's definitely the Oprah connection and the fact that she's a lady author, but whatever the reasons, I feel like people who haven't read her believe that Morrison writes these lovely, lyrical, ladylike books that will soften the heart and elevate the soul.... and I mean, I guess in a way she does, but these lovely books will give you seriously deranged nightmares. Toni Morrison is out of her MIND! I mean, she really must be in order to write these things. I can't imagine what it would be like to have this incredibly twisted stuff come out of my brain.... Of course, the most horrific parts of the book aren't invented; Morrison clearly spent a lot of time researching the historical record of slavery and thinking about its effects and meaning, and her ability to wrest a novel like this out of that past is just incomprehensible.... because in fact Beloved really is lovely and lyrical, but it's about the most disturbing shit imaginable. It's interesting to see how divided people on this site are about Morrison. A lot of people just LOATHE her! I think that's pretty understandable when you consider her subject matter. Some girl on here was like, "UGH! Beastiality, rape, torture, infanticide.... Toni Morrison is DISGUSTING!" And I mean, well, that girl's got a point, this book was pretty icky.... but it's about kind of an icky topic, ya know? In a weird way, this felt a bit like the anti-Proust: it's about memory, but instead of being a plotless, enchanting, European meander through a picturesque past, Beloved is a brutal and ruthless American cousin with rough, bloody hands, running through the woods screaming. The book is about the problem of memory, specifically the memory of trauma, both on a personal and national level. I feel like everyone always wants to write these great books about the most terrible shit, but the fact is that doing so right is incredibly hard, which is maybe why there're so many bad books about tragedy and so many good books about boring people's mundane little problems. You really have to know what you're doing to write about the most terrible shit well, and Morrison picked THE most terrible shit in America's past, then wrote an original and organic ghost story that deserves its hallowed place in American literature.... Ya know, one thing we think about in social work school (or that I thought about, anyway) is the relationship between macro events or phenomena (e.g., a war, or racism) and its micro effects on individuals. This book depicts the effects of slavery on people -- individually and collectively -- with, just, well, shattering genius. But don't try this at home, folks! She is a lady of unusual talent and skills, and in most people's clumsy hands this effort'd be dangerous. Beloved isn't flawless, and it's not one of my all-time favorite books or anything. However, it is a great classic, and I think everyone who hasn't already should read it.... well, actually, let me amend that. A lot of people on here, as noted, hate this book. If you struggle to follow a slightly nonlinear narrative or are white and feel personally affronted by descriptions of historical wrongs perpetrated by white people on black people, you might chose another book club selection. Everyone else, though, I think should give this a go, especially if you love ghost stories! P.S. I just had a really fun idea for a literary double date, which would be Cathy from Wuthering Heights with Beloved, and Medea with Sethe. They could all go on the Oprah show together and talk about their traumatic experiences! I would definitely, definitely watch that, and I bet other people would too.

Review # 2 was written on 2012-10-07 00:00:00 Angela Corrado "Beloved You are my sister You are my daughter You are my face; you are me I have found you again; you have come back to me You are my beloved You are mine You 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 me is being tied to a pole and whipped mercilessly for eating a shoat I skinned, butchered and cooked myself. A part of me is giving birth to children of fathers who forced themselves on me. A part of me is still wondering whether my husband Halle is out there alive and free or long dead. A part of me is burying the daughter I killed with a handsaw because I couldn't live to see her being pushed into the endless abyss of torture and humiliation that I had to endure myself. A part of me is engraving the word 'Beloved' on the headstone of my dead girl, because she has no name. But it is not I. It is Sethe and Sethe is not I. I'm not even Baby Suggs (Sethe's mother-in-law) who never had a chance to recognize that she was a human being with a beating heart. Baby Suggs, who only looked at her own hands at the sunset of life and came to the realization that they were her own. Her very own for her own use and not the use of another. Baby Suggs, who was forced to accept the "kindness" of being bought out of slave labour by her own son, at the cost of never seeing him again, never knowing what happened to him. I'm not Paul D, being made to wear neck braces as punishment for an act of belligerence, unable to move his head. Deeply afraid of starting a new life and adding a purpose to it-not knowing what to do with the new-found freedom after the Civil War. Afraid of loving too much and losing too much because of it. I'm just a lucky Indian girl who was born in an era free from the worst form of human rights violation that ever existed on the planet. I was not alive during the period of systematic brutalization of one particular race by another just because one proclaimed racial superiority over the other. I was not in the plantations of Kentucky or Georgia or the Carolinas before or after the Civil War. I wasn't in the hell called 'Sweet Home'. But Sethe was. So were Halle, Paul D, Sixo, Paul A and Baby Suggs and the unnamed ones. And a part of me is with them and I still cannot wrest it away. I can perhaps ramble on and on and still be completely unable to write a proper review of 'Beloved'. And I won't even try to summarize the book in a few sentences, since that would be deeply irreverent of me. Beloved is not just a masterpiece, not even just a remarkable literary achievement. Beloved is the beauty of the resilience of the human spirit. Beloved is about hope and endurance. Beloved tells us about unspeakable cruelty and abuse inflicted on humanity by humanity itself. Beloved reveals festering psychological wounds, deep emotional scars that could never ever heal. Beloved is profoundly lyrical and empathetic in its depiction of grotesque events that unfolded during the most ignominious part of America's history. Beloved wrenches your heart out, shreds it into a million tiny pieces but then stitches all the pieces together and hands your heart back to you - all bloodied and messed up. Maybe a few years down the line when I read Beloved again, I will write a more coherent review and sound less emotional. Maybe I will get every cryptic message Toni Morrison intended for her reader to receive and decode. Maybe I will not. But I will try. And I will read this book again when I feel like my life is difficult or I can't go on anymore. I'm sure Sethe and Beloved will be there to hold my hands and lead me forward. I cannot write anymore. I must go and find myself another tissue. P.S.:- Apologies for the spoilers I have ended up including in the review. But I just had to write this the way I did.