Powerful and brutally real. Toni Morrison tells the truth about slavery and new emancipation in a heart wrenching story that we all should read. The language and dialogue helps the story but her amazing prose lifts this story into another realm of sweetness, light, sorrow, bravery and a healthy dose of mystism. ( )

Morrison leans into the magical realism that felt out of place in Song of Solomon, and put it front and center in the setting and characters of this book. While this book is strong when it comes to exploring the mental and spiritual struggles of the characters, it often moves slowly and feels less readable than some of Morrison's other works. ( )

A novel about things that come back, and that never go away. Troubles you can't avoid, bad memories that resurface. Beloved is a ghost story, but first it is a story about black slavery and the lives it stole, the alternative could-have-beens and should-have-beens that would never be for those who struggled under it, who survived with what little life they could make or else did not. By extension it is a story about how much one person can tolerate before they reach a breaking point, and the forms that breaking can take. Paul D endures more and longer than anyone, has seen all of his fellow slaves' fates play out before him. He is left with only the unanswerable repeated question, "Why?"

Some brilliant passages toward the end reminded me of the last chapter from James Joyce's Ulysses, in which everything is made clear and not clear simultaneously - the tumult of thoughts stitched through with emotion. It's followed by an oddly conventional denouement and I think Ella should have been introduced sooner, but it works to demonstrate a community's power to heal wounds which individuals cannot. ( )

Remarkable, non linear and filled with insights

I'd known about this book and it's author for quite some time but had no idea what I was in for. Like a finely tuned instrument, Toni uses words and metaphor unlike most. Filled with the racial elements of slavery, its non-linear, multi-character POV with each chapter made it hard to follow. Frustrated by the challenge, I was tempted to quit, but the plot and engagement with characters kept it alive. Toni is an extremely talented storyteller whose ability to 'speak' from a black slave's perspective is genius. "Twelve Years a Slave" is another book that manages to accomplish this with a similar skill, though Ms. Morrison's word smithing is far superior. Having read other Pulitzer winners, this isn't my favorite though I can understand how it won. ( )

My first encounter with this beautiful novel was when I was studying at the University of Limerick in 2014. I took a class called ‘Contemporary Women’s Writing’, where we read different novels – Possession by A S Byatt, The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, a collection of short stories by Angela Carter, and this novel. I remember breezing through the book in a week as soon as I got truly into it, reading like my life depended on it. It probably helps that I was bedridden while reading it, suffering from a terrible bout of the flu, but I still enjoyed it immensely.

The story is a twisted form of a three-generation novel, taking place in the 19th century, at a time when slavery was still a very important issue in the United States. Baby, Sethe and Denver are black women; the first two suffered as slaves for a good portion of their lives before earning their freedom (in Baby’s case) or running away (in Sethe’s case). Sethe was ‘married’ to one of Baby’s sons, a man who has since disappeared and rumored to have gone mad. Living in Ohio, a state where they are free, Sethe’s past soon catches up to her, both in the form of a man who she knew when she was a slave (who also happens to be one of Baby’s sons), and in the form of a ghostly presence that haunts her current stead.

If you know the story of Margaret Garner, a slave woman who was the inspiration for the painting The Modern Medea by Thomas Satterwhite Noble, then you know Sethe’s story. Under the law, Sethe was free, but her children were not, and so they were to return to her master after she ran away. But rather than let her children suffer the horrors of slavery, Sethe tries to kill them, succeeding in killing her eldest daughter, but not the others. She is sent to prison, and eventually returns, shunned from her community and haunted by the baby she killed. Her sons eventually abandon her, and the ghost’s presence only grows stronger over time.

This novel is not only a wonderful commentary on the history of slavery in the United States, but is also something I would call a ‘modern Gothic’ – it has all the right elements for a Gothic story on the same level as Wuthering Heights. A spurned ghost, a lost lover returning after years of absence, a home on the edge of the community that nobody dares to approach. The story has all the right elements to be spooky, as well as poignant. Sethe’s actions, though condemned, come from a place of love and protection; she wants her children to be safe, and if that means they have to die, so be it. Her murdered daughter, her beloved, wants revenge for her life being cut so short. Her living daughter, Denver, simply wants things to be normal, wants an education, wants to be around her community again. Without revealing too much about the ending, it is in fact through the community that Sethe can eventually start to heal from the pain emanating from her past.

This novel brought me to a point where I had no other option but to research the slave trade in the United States to better understand the context of the story. The American Civil War, the slave trade, why Abraham Lincoln’s election was so important: it all made so much more sense with this book in mind. Keep in mind, I’m European – we barely ever hear about the slave trade here unless it’s to talk about what America did. Reading something like this – first at the University of Limerick, and then at the University of Malta for another unit – made everything seem a lot more real and a lot more painful.

Final rating: I’m aware that this review is a bit all over the place, but please read this book I have given a 4.5/5. ( )