Beloved

Book Details

Author: Toni Morrison

Published: June 8th, 2004

Pages: 275 (Paperback)

Genre: Historical Fiction, Horror, Drama

"124 was spiteful. Full of a baby's venom. The women in the house knew it and so did the children."

Sethe escaped from slavery, but that doesn't mean she escaped the memories. Beloved is about Sethe, but it's also about her daughter, Denver, and her lover, Paul D, and how memories take on a life of their own sometimes. And then Beloved shows up.

This is considered one of Toni Morrison's greatest works and it got turned into a movie that starred Oprah and Danny Glover (in case you can't read the names in the picture).

Thoughts

I am being completely honest when I say that I read this book because of the actor Wentworth Miller.

I had the biggest crush on him when I was a teenager (He is still gorgeous and still underrated, in my opinion) and I read anything about him I could get my hands on. I read interviews, watched interviews, etc. Pretty standard fan girl stuff. So, when I read that this was his favourite book, I had to read it. I mean, it was his FAVOURITE, right?

When I finally found a decent copy, I realized I had already started reading this book. I had started reading it when I was 15 or 16, picking it up randomly at the school library. At the time I was reading just about anything that was different from what we usually read in school. And I was eager to pick up anything that had characters that weren't white.

*SPOILER*

That first time I made it as far as the cow sex scene and stopped.

*END SPOILER*

Wentworth Miller loved it though, so there must be SOMETHING about it, right?

So I re-read it (so to speak). But I deeply questioned his judgement while I was reading. I liked it, but I wasn't sold on it being anyone's favourite book.

It took another read through (a couple years later) to finally feel like I understood what I was reading. Kind of. There is a lot of meat to this story. Some meat is tougher to digest than other meats. I couldn't understand what Sethe was going through because I had no real context for it. I didn't understand what Morrison was trying to convey to me through her words, her flashbacks, her seemingly non sequitur moments.

It is one of my favourite books (not just because of Wentworth, but he sure as hell helped), but it definitely takes a couple of read-throughs to even begin grasp some of it.

Sethe is stronger than she seems, because we attribute mental health issues with weakness. And it's more than memories haunting her. She has physical reminders of her time as human chattel. She has more than memory to remind her of the horrors she has survived.

I think it is good to go back and read some of what you read when you were younger to see how your different opinions and thoughts affect the read. I might just do that with this one soon!

And, in case you were curious, I no longer question Wentworth's love for this book.

Rating

On Goodreads I listed this as a 4 out of 5.

Here I'll give it a 9 out of 10 partially because of the spoiler above. That gets me every time and I'm not sure why it was necessary to the overall story. But it's a lovely book despite that.

This book is rated R for adult language and adult situations

I would NOT recommend this to people who don't appreciate re-reading books, people who dislike horror or psychological books, cows and children under the age 17, preferably.

However, if you enjoy trying to decipher books over a couple readings, horror and historical fiction I would suggest it. It's beautiful and difficult and well worth the effort.