Global Reading Challenge: BELOVED by Toni Morrison

ISBN: 9780099511656 [UK]

Continent: North America

Country: USA

Title: Beloved

Author: Toni Morrison

First published in: 1988

Awards: Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, 1988; Frederic G. Melcher Book Award, 1988

My pick from my home country, the USA, is Toni Morrison's Beloved. A dark tale about an ex-slave who is haunted by the ghost of the baby daughter whose life she ended, Beloved is easily the most powerful novel I've read in recent years.

Sethe is only nineteen when she makes her escape from Sweet Home, the farm she's worked on as a slave for many years, until an exceptionally evil new overseer forces her to flee with her three children. She is heavily pregnant with a fourth child when she runs away, a daughter called Denver, who 18 when the novel opens.

Sethe and Denver live an isolated existence on the edge of the Ohio river. After the death of her baby daughter 18 years before, the black community has shunned Sethe and her home, which is haunted by the violent spirit of the child. But everything changes when Paul D, another former Sweet Home slave, arrives at the house and drives the ghost out. But the child, who has no name and is identified on her gravestone only as "Beloved," is determined to come back, one way or another.

Denver, who views her dead sister as her only friend, is heartbroken when the ghost decamps. Soon after, a strange young woman arrives at the house with no coherent memory of her past, calling herself only "Beloved."

As the four main characters haltingly begin their life together, the past gradually fades into focus, giving the reader the entire story of what happened the day that Sethe took her baby's life.

I had a very hard time putting this book down. It's one of those stories that makes you think, really think, about things like the evil that human beings are capable of, about the destructive side of love, about the importance of—and the oppression inherent in—belonging to a society. For several days after finishing Beloved I found myself thinking about the story and its themes. Was the ghost real? Wasn't use of color, of water, of trees interesting? Can too much love destroy someone? Or too much guilt? Or indignity? How could human beings ever allow slavery to happen?

In addition to its philosophical undertones, the novel is simply beautifully written—full of memorable characters, beautiful descriptions, and rich, authentic dialogue.

Five stars out of five. Just read it.

Toni Morrison, "who in novels characterized by visionary force and poetic import, gives life to an essential aspect of American reality"* was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993, six years after Beloved was published.

*Quote from "The Nobel Prize in Literature 1993". Nobelprize.org. 9 Feb 2011 http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1993/