Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
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
Amazon.com Audiobook Review
As with the ghost at its
center, Beloved has taken many forms--from the Pulitzer Prize-winning
novel to Oprah Winfrey's decade-in-the-making movie to this challenging
audio book read by Lynn Whitfield. Whitfield, who won an Emmy Award playing
the title role in The Josephine Baker
Story, has a tough assignment as she guides us back and forth in time
with Sethe, an escaped slave who's still shackled by memories of her
murdered child. But, as we shift between Sethe's brutal plantation days and
her haunted life immediately after the Civil War, we learn one secret after
another until, finally, past and present are masterfully reconciled.
(Running time: three hours, two cassettes) --Kimberly Heinrichs
From Publishers Weekly
Mixed with the lyric beauty of
the writing, the fury in Morrison's (Song of Solomon latest book is
almost palpable. Set in rural Ohio several years after the Civil War, this
haunting chronicle of slavery and its aftermath traces the life of a young
woman, Sethe, who has kept a terrible memory at bay only by shutting down
part of her mind. Juxtaposed with searing descriptions of brutality,
gradually revealed in flashbacks, are equally harrowing scenes in which
fantasy takes flesh, a device Morrison handles with consummate skill. The
narrative concerns Sethe's former life as a slave on Sweet Home Farm, her
escape with her children to what seems a safe haven and the tragic events
that ensue. The death of Sethe's infant daughter Beloved is the incident on
which the plot hinges, and it is obvious to the reader that the sensuous
young woman who mysteriously appears one day is Beloved's spirit, come back
to claim Sethe's love. Sethe's surviving daughter, Denver, immediately
grasps the significance of Beloved's return and so does Paul Dno period
after D, another escapee from Sweet Home; but Sethe herself resists
comprehension, and, as a result, a certain loss of tension affects the
latter part of the narrative. But this is a small flaw in a novel full of
insights, both piercing and tender, with distinctive, memorable characters,
flowing prose that conveys speech patterns with musical intensity and a
brilliantly conceived story. As a record of white brutality mitigated by
rare acts of decency and compassion, and as a testament to the courageous
lives of a tormented people, this novel is a milestone in the chronicling of
the black experience in America. It is Morrison writing at the height of her
considerable powers, and it should not be missed. BOMC main selection.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc
From Library Journal
Powerful is too tame a word to
describe Toni Morrison's searing new novel of post-Civil War Ohio. Morrison,
whose myth-laden storytelling shone in Song of Solomon and other novels, has
created an unforgettable world in this novel about ex-slaves haunted by
violent memories. Before the war, Sethe, pregnant, sent her children away to
their grandmother in Ohio, whose freedom had been paid for by their father.
Sethe runs too, but when her "owners" come to recapture her, she attempts to
murder the children, succeeding with one, named Beloved. This murder will
(literally) haunt Sethe for the rest of her life and affect everyone around
her. A fascinating, grim, relentless story, this important book by a major
writer belongs in most libraries. Ann H. Fisher, Radford P.L., Va.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.
New York Times Book Review, Margaret Atwood
Another triumph. . . . Ms.
Morrison's versatility and technical and emotional range appear to know no
bounds . . . If you can believe page one--and Ms. Morrison's verbal
authority compels belief--you're hooked on the rest of the book.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From AudioFile
"Easily she stepped into the
told story that lay before her." Toni Morrison's reading of Beloved is a
stirring experience. She transports you to the dooryard, to Sweet Home
plantation, to 124 Bluestone Road as she weaves in and out of the story of
Sethe, a runaway slave, and her daughters. Morrison is there with you,
speaking slowly, making each image live in your imagination. She speaks of
colors--a pink tongue, a blue handkerchief, yellow flowers--each hue becomes
so vivid against a background of browns, blacks and gray. She tells of
unimaginable hardship and tragedy, and makes the power of the words get you
through it. Morrison handles the dialogue among characters with impressive
skill, not for characterization, but for the pacing and rhythm that is so
essential to her literature. Banter is, at times, very contemporary, while
other conversations have a highly stylized and mystical tone. Anyone who has
read Beloved in the written form will be stunned by how much more Morrison
has to share in the oral form. Don't miss this treasured author and
storyteller at her magnificent work. R.F.W. An AUDIOFILE Earphones Award
winner (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine
From 500 Great Books by Women; review by Erica Bauermeister
When slavery has torn apart one's heritage, when the
past is more real than the present, when the rage of a dead baby can
literally rock a house, then the traditional novel is no longer an adequate
instrument. And so Pulitzer Prize-winner Beloved is written in bits
and images, smashed like a mirror on the floor and left for the reader to
put together. In a novel that is hypnotic, beautiful, and elusive, Toni
Morrison portrays the lives of Sethe, an escaped slave and mother, and those
around her. There is Sixo, who "stopped speaking English because there was
no future in it," and Mister, the overseer who defines slaves in terms of
"human" and "animal" characteristics. There is Baby Suggs, who makes her
living with her heart because slavery "had busted her legs, back, head,
eyes, hands, kidneys, womb and tongue;" and Paul D, a man with a rusted
metal box for a heart and a presence that allows women to cry. At the center
is Sethe, whose story makes us think and think again about what we mean when
we say we love our children or freedom. The stories circle, swim dreamily to
the surface, and are suddenly clear and horrifying. Because of the
extraordinary, experimental style as well as the intensity of the subject
matter, what we learn from them touches at a level deeper than
understanding. -- For great reviews of books for girls, check out Let's
Hear It for the Girls: 375 Great Books for Readers 2-14.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Julianne Moore, O: The Oprah Magazine
To me this book is all emotion,
a big morass of feeling. It's remarkable.
Book Description
Artwork copyright Touchstone
Pictures
At the center of Toni Morrison's fifth novel, which
earned her the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, is an almost unspeakable act
of horror and heroism: a woman brutally kills her infant daughter rather
than allow her to be enslaved. The woman is Sethe, and the novel traces her
journey from slavery to freedom during and immediately following the Civil
War. Woven into this circular, mesmerizing narrative are the horrible truths
of Sethe's past: the incredible cruelties she endured as a slave, and the
hardships she suffered in her journey north to freedom. Just as Sethe finds
the past too painful to remember, and the future just "a matter of keeping
the past at bay," her story is almost too painful to read. Yet Morrison
manages to imbue the wreckage of her characters' lives with compassion,
humanity, and humor. Part ghost story, part history lesson, part folk tale,
Beloved finds beauty in the unbearable, and lets us all see the
enduring promise of hope that lies in anyone's future. Coming from Plume in
April 1999, Toni Morrison's #1 New York Times bestseller...PARADISE
Ingram
"Beloved", the Pulitzer
Prize-winning novel by Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison is now a major motion
picture directed by Jonathan Demme, and starring Oprah Winfrey, Danny
Glover, and Thandie Newton. Set in the years immediately following the Civil
War, "Beloved" tells the story of an escaped slave haunted by the memory of
her murdered daughter.
From the Back Cover
"Beloved possesses the
heightened power and resonance of myth.
An extraordinary novel."
-Michiko Kakutani, New York Times
About the Author
Toni Morrison has worked in
publishing and taught at various universities, including Yale, Rutgers, and
the State University of New York at Albany as the Schweitzer Chair. She is
currently Robert F. Goheen Professor at Princeton. She received the Nobel
Prize for Literature in 1993, and the National Book Foundation Medal for
Distinguished Contribution to American Letters in 1996. Beloved won the 1988
Pulitzer Prize for fiction.
|
