Jo's Reviews > Beloved

Expectations can often mean that a novel can only be a disappointment, however slight, and when its one as feted as the Pulitizer prize winning Beloved, can expectations ever match up? Apparently yes. It seems like every time I pick up a Toni Morrison after a gap, I am once again ill prepared for how good her writing is. It’s not flashy or verbose or overly intellectual but just beautiful, emotional and quiet even when describing some utterly gut-wrenching events.

Sethe, an escaped slave who now lives as a free woman has had trauma and tragedy throughout her life as has Paul D, a fellow ex slave who lived on the same plantation as Sethe. We hear about their experiences with punishment and abuse, as well as many of those who either lived with them or who they meet later in life and all are horrific, yet Toni Morrison ekes these experiences out bit by bit so the novel isn’t simply a litany of pain and suffering. As Sethe says, she fights against remembering but her brain just won’t let her and it is only when Paul D comes back into her life that they feel compelled and comfortable enough to relate their past to one another.

The experience of motherhood as a slave is central to the book, what Sethe has gone through for and because of her children and in particular her daughter Beloved. However, having gone into the book knowing nothing, I think relating too much of what happens would spoil the experience, so I’ll simply add that it is a brutal education in the realities of slavery and what people are capable of doing to one another, while at the same time giving hope because of people and what they will do for one another. For once, the superlatives that decorate the cover of my copy aren’t an exaggeration and I can’t recommend this novel highly enough.