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Beloved
by: Toni Morrison

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Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9780099273936
ISBN: 0099273934
Label: Vintage
Manufacturer: Vintage
Number Of Pages: 276
Publication Date: March 04, 1999
Publisher: Vintage
Studio: Vintage
Sales Rank: 11498

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Editorial Review:

Amazon.co.uk Review:
In the troubled years following the Civil War, the spirit of a murdered child haunts the Ohio home of a former slave. This angry, destructive ghost breaks mirrors, leaves its fingerprints in cake icing, and generally makes life difficult for Sethe and her family; nevertheless, the woman finds the haunting oddly comforting for the spirit is that of her own dead baby, never named, thought of only as Beloved.

A dead child, a runaway slave, a terrible secret--these are the central concerns of Toni Morrison's Pulitzer Prize-winning Beloved. Morrison, a Nobel laureate, has written many fine novels, including Song of Solomon, The Bluest Eye, and Paradise--but Beloved is arguably her best. To modern readers, antebellum slavery is a subject so familiar that it is almost impossible to render its horrors in a way that seems neither clichéd nor melodramatic. Rapes, beatings, murders, and mutilations are recounted here, but they belong to characters so precisely drawn that the tragedy remains individual, terrifying to us because it is terrifying to the sufferer. And Morrison is master of the telling detail: in the bit, for example, a punishing piece of headgear used to discipline recalcitrant slaves, she manages to encapsulate all of slavery's many cruelties into one apt symbol--a device that deprives its wearer of speech. "Days after it was taken out, goose fat was rubbed on the corners of the mouth but nothing to soothe the tongue or take the wildness out of the eye." Most importantly, the language here, while often lyrical, is never overheated. Even as she recalls the cruelties visited upon her while a slave, Sethe is evocative without being overemotional: "Add my husband to it, watching, above me in the loft--hiding close by--the one place he thought no one would look for him, looking down on what I couldn't look at at all. And not stopping them--looking and letting it happen.... And if he was that broken then, then he is also and certainly dead now." Even the supernatural is treated as an ordinary fact of life: "Not a house in the country ain't packed to its rafters with some dead Negro's grief. We lucky this ghost is a baby," comments Sethe's mother-in-law.

Beloved is a dense, complex novel that yields up its secrets one by one. As Morrison takes us deeper into Sethe's history and her memories, the horrifying circumstances of her baby's death start to make terrible sense. And as past meets present in the shape of a mysterious young woman about the same age as Sethe's daughter would have been, the narrative builds inexorably to its powerful, painful conclusion. Beloved may well be the defining novel of slavery in America, the one that all others will be measured by. --Alix Wilber

Customer Reviews

Average Rating: out of 5 stars

Rating:

- Subtle, classy ghost story
A literary ghost story which explores issues of slavery, family, love and death, 'Beloved' is a book that stays with you long after it's finished. The writing is intricate and beautiful, full of emotion yet always controlled.

Sethe, a freed former slave, and her daughter live in a house haunted by the spirit of her other daughter, Beloved, who died 18 years ago. When a old friend arrives at the house and asserts his authority, Beloved fights back. It might sound far fetched but it is actually one of the most plausible tales of the supernatural I have read. Morrison blends the fantastical and the normal together effortlessly in flowing, readable prose.

It's not always an easy read, particularly in the first couple ... Read More:

Rating:

- Wanting to Remember and Needing to Forget
At the center of this novel is a house that is infused with the memory of what is too painful to be remembered and what is so important that it cannot be forgot. Sethe and Paul D are people who have both survived slavery though at a heavy cost. Both had to flee their homes and everything that was familiar because "home" is not completely "sweet" as its name wishes to make it but then again it is not all sour. Both have been raped. Now, together, they are trying to find a way to look to the future. Paul D is constantly pressing to this end in his naturally patriarchal way, but he is stopped in his progression to make a home by a spiritual invocation that is nothing less than a living memory: Beloved. The make-shift idealistic home is not a proper enclosure ... Read More:

Rating:

- A complicated, horrifying yet brilliant book.
I am studying Beloved for AS level English Lang and Lit. I found that the book had a confusing plot and often it was hard to understand. It portrayed the slave trade as horrific and made a big impact about the way in which we judge people by their colour. It made me realise that we cannot judge by colour if we should be judged at all.A powerful and spectacular novel.

Rating:

- One of my top three books of all time
I had to read this book for a university course and was totally blown away by it. It is powerful and passionate. It is tremendously complex and works on many levels. I thoroughly enjoyed it as a narrative, but was more and more impressed the deeper I looked into it. It deals with history and the role of story telling, religion and fate. The more I read it, the more I find. If I could ever even begin to write a book like this I would be a happy woman.

Rating:

- Far more than just a course text!
I had to read Beloved for an English course I was taking at university, which can sometimes have the effect of putting me off a text or an author, at least for a while until I deal with the exam and essay stresses! However, in this case, the novel was actually really interesting and of such high quality that I found I really enjoyed both reading it and going into more depth when studying it. I also read The Bluest Eye (completely voluntarily! :)) and plan to read as many other of Toni Morrison's books as I can this summer. For an English major like me to actually enjoy a piece of work she's had to study, and not just incessantly criticise it, you know there must be something really good here :)

Books : Beloved