Beloved

By Toni Morrison

Book Overview

Discover Toni Morrison's most iconic work in this Pulitzer-prize winning novel that exemplifies her powerful and important place in contemporary American literature.

'An American masterpiece' AS Byatt

It is the mid-1800s and as slavery looks to be coming to an end, Sethe is haunted by the violent trauma it wrought on her former enslaved life at Sweet Home, Kentucky. Her dead baby daughter, whose tombstone bears the single word, Beloved, returns as a spectre to punish her mother, but also to elicit her love. Told with heart-stopping clarity, melding horror and beauty, Beloved is Toni Morrison's enduring masterpiece.

'Toni Morrison was a giant of her times and ours..."Beloved," is a heartbreaking testimony to the ongoing ravages of slavery, and should be read by all' Margaret Atwood, New York Times

'The literary titan we must never stop learning from' Metro

Winner of the PEN/Saul Bellow award for achievement in American fiction

**One of the BBC's 100 Novels That Shaped Our World**

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0099760118
• ISBN13: 9780099760115
• Release Date: August 1997
• Publisher: Vintage
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 0.62 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.1" x 7.8"

Customer Reviews

A classic that needs to be reread, discussed and honored!

Though at times a difficult read due to the prose, historically and emotionally much needed read by all. My book club was very appreciative of the style of writing as it elicited questions of American Slavery, poverty, racial issues and how this book is still so current on our political distress. Even if becomes difficult to understand, i recommend you power through it, discuss it with people of all ethnicity and let it feel it touch your own humanity

The book has mold on it

I didn't get a chance to read the book, which smells bad and it has mold. I'm trying to return but I'm not seeing how to..

Finally Read It

Ms. T.Morrison did amazing creating this book. They way the story unfolds is so poetic. I was unsettled throughout the book regarding the storyline and characterizations. But the greatest comeback-tale of this book is little Denver! Read it for all the little black girls that has to hold their heads up and put their shoulders back because someone else is drifting and cannot with-stand.

never recovering

this is genuinely one of the greatest books i’ve ever read. not only does it delve into slavery and the apologia warfare it leaves on its victims, but the touch of supernatural, motherhood, community, etc. brings this book to life. toni morrison writes with such emotion and familiarity that you can’t help but tear up.

Life-Changing

1. This book is entirely worth the read, and a re-read later too! If given only five books (in literature) to read in your life, I’d still give it a definite recommend. Just try to be prepared, Beloved is confusing and INTENSE. 2. Ordered it in good condition, received a book in near-perfect condition after a reasonable time

Morrison is am astonishing writer!

I think it was the first time i experienced what it felt like to be a slave

Freaky and chilling

It was scary and disturbing.

Poignantly beloved.

Mesmerizing. Passionate. Excellent. Flawed. These are some of the words I see describing Toni Morrison's novel Beloved. What I do not see is recognition that what is seen as the author's flawed, imperfect style is, in fact, the African storytelling style. In her case, the medium is the message. Ms. Morrison's voice is the voice of Africa. This is a living narrative, enriched with the rhythm of a land that speaks in the heartbeat of this novel's characters. I read similar reviews of Ms. Morrison's other novels. I can sense, through the rich language, the song of hot days and richly dyed cloth torn in the teeth of slavery and exploitation. The words slide smooth to the bone, awakening the smells of confusion and grief and despair accompanied by the hope of a new day for healing. Slavery appears in many forms and disguises. The terrible wonderfulness of this book is a walk in a shared history and culture. We are all children of the dark skinned mother. She remains alive and strong in Beloved, and keeps the remembering alive.

Beloved: a thrilling novel with building up suspense

"Beloved" is full of unexpected, eccentric events that revolve around the black community and 124, a house haunted by the spirit of a spiteful baby. Throughout the novel, haunting memories of slavery's inhumanity torment the four main characters, Sethe, Paul D., Denver, and Beloved. The aftermath of slavery, as this suspenseful novel reveals, is extremely brutal and destructive to each character's life. As the story transit from past to present in an unordered pattern, the true desires and values of the characters are slowly unmasked. This novel requires deep understanding and reflection upon each ideas and events. An excessive amount of symbolic and metaphoric images are included within this novel, causing the reader to think beyond the surface of logical meaning. The supernatural aspects of the story, such as Beloved being a reincarnation of the dead baby's spirit, push the limit of readers' ordinary understanding. Morrison's use of poetic, vivid, and intense words help to create the tone of fear, anguish, and admiration. Love, slavery, and motherhood are joined in "Beloved" to create emotional inspiration. Set in the years following Civil War in rural Ohio, the destruction of relationships, motherly love, and self-identity is clarified to be caused by the brutality of slavery. Sethe, escaping from slavery, struggles to break free from the cruel memories of her past as an owned property. Despite her freedom, she has difficulties leaving behind her past including the child whom she had killed, physical and mental scars that she finds impossible to heal, and the stories of Paul D. and Sweet Home. I believe that through this novel, Toni Morrison attempts to prevent the extreme sufferings of the slaves from being forgotten due to forced silence. I strongly recommend this passionate and deep novel to everyone, especially for those interested in mystery and suspense.

The Power of One Mother's Love

What kind of mother would deliberately cause the destruction of her own beloved child? This is the question Pulitzer and Nobel Prize winner (and probably the greatest woman novelist of the twentieth century), Toni Morrison, explores in her rich, densely-layered novel, Beloved.Set after the end of the Civil War, when slaves were freed by emancipation, but still victims of random acts of violence, the book also serves as a metaphor for the legacy of slavery and asks the chillingly relevant question: Why is the leading cause of death among young, African-American men murder by another black?Beloved's protagonist is Sethe, an escaped slave and mother of four. Her joy at successfully escaping her former master while pregnant and giving birth before finally finding refuge at her spiritually-nourishing mother-in-law's home, vanishes a mere twenty-eight days later.The sight of a cruel white slave owner's hat sends Sethe and her children running to a woodshed where she is forced to confront demons no loving mother should ever have to face.Sethe's demons do not disappear when she emerges from the woodshed, however, and settles down in a small Ohio town. Instead, they remain to both haunt her and help her to understand the violence that occurred so many years previously.Morrison, as skillful a storyteller as ever lived, spins a gorgeously heartbreaking tale in Beloved, and one whose plot is impossible to predict. With a mastery of language given to only a few, this extraordinarily talented author weaves subplot upon subplot and brings each exquisitely created character to life.There is Paul D, another slave who escaped from the same plantation as did Sethe but who has not seen Sethe for more than a decade when he once again encounters her and the two of them contemplate what they hope will finally be a bright future for both.There is Denver, Sethe's daughter, a troubled and isolated teenager whose life encompasses little more than her immediate surroundings and whose social interactions have dwindled down to embrace only her mother and the ghost of her long-dead sister.And then, there is Beloved, the centerpiece of this exquisitely wirtten, lyrically beautiful book.While Sethe appears to embrace a logic that says, "Before the while man destroys you, let me do it," Morrison, herself, tells us that it is time for us to look beyond the past and move on.Today, more than twenty years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act, African Americans are, in many ways, worse off than they were before. The question plaguing most black Americans seems to be whether to cast their lot with the whites of the community or to separate, turn inward and seek their own redemption...alone.In Beloved, Morrison uses the character of Ella, one of the leaders of her small Ohio community, to metaphorically explore this issue. "Whatever Sethe had done, Ella didn't like the idea of past errors taking possession of the present...Daily life to

one of Morrison's finest books

As a a high school English teacher, I've reread this book about 8 times and have taught it over the years to many students. Although it's certainly a complex novel, it's basic storyline is not hard to follow -- just the narrative style which shifts voices quite a bit. One thing that helps when reading anything by Morrison, but especially Beloved, is to remember that she herself is a classicist. Do yourself a favor and read the Medea myth -- you will suddenly understand 100 times more than you would if you skip it. I would also recommend NOT watching the movie, particularly if you are looking for explanations. Parts were well done, but the book is so rich that it seems mean to lower the dignity of the prose by showing private scenes. It's an incredibly rich and lyric novel with strains of Morrison's rendition of a kind of Magic Realism style. Don't expect everything to be realistic: there are ghosts and half painted characters that cross our normal boundaries of time. Expect to be disoriented at the beginning, but the plot clears up as you go and then you can go back and re-read the opening chapters. A great work of literature which yields more after every reading.

A powerful story of human nature, guilt, and love

When I was first assigned this book for summer reading in my AP English class, I believe my thought was, "Darn." I did not expect to be uplifted by a story which I had heard described by upperclassmen as "depressing", "depraved", and "confusing." But I was. Morrison attacks taboo subjects with taste, compassion and humanity. Although her treatment of time can become confusing, the reader who endeavors to understand this book will! This is not a light read for an airplane trip (learn from my mistakes, readers! When it's Beloved by Morrison or Pauly Shore in Biodome on the inflight movie...!), but rather a deep and thought-provoking read that requires many hours of somber solitude. There were parts of the novel that went over my head until my English teacher explained them to me, but I don't know if that is because of my young age or the depth of the book. However, you might want to take into consideration before spending money on the book that this is essentially a stream-of-consciousness novel, with many different facets and motifs. The book contains some really graphic subject matter, which is another thing to consider. However, this is what I consider the bottom line: This is a fantastic, although sometimes shocking and confusing, book. I believe that anyone who is mature and really tries to understand this book will be enriched by it.