Beloved: A NovelAfter Paul D. finds his old slave friend Sethe in Ohio and moves in with her and her daughter Denver, a strange girl comes along by the name of "Beloved." Sethe and Denver take her in and then strange things begin to happen. Set in rural Ohio several years after the Civil War, this profoundly affecting chronicle of slavery and its aftermath is Toni Morrison's greatest novel, a dazzling achievement, and the most spellbinding reading experience of the decade. A brutally powerful, mesmerizing story ... read it and tremble. 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 anyones future. |
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ain't arms asked baby blood Baby Suggs beat believed Beloved Beloved's Bodwin boxwood boys breath Buglar chamomile chokecherry clabber color cooking daddy dark dead Denver door dress eyes face feel feet felt fingers Garner Georgia girl gone Grandma Baby hair Halle Halle's hands head hear heard holding hurt Janey keeping room Kentucky knees knew Lady Jones laughed lean-to leave live ma'am milk mind mother mouth moved neck Negroes never nigger night Ohio River once Paul pick pickaninnies porch remember road schoolteacher Sethe looked Sethe's shoes sitting Sixo skin slaughterhouse sleep smile Stamp Paid stay step stood stopped stove Sweet Home talk tell thing thought told Toni Morrison took touched trees turned voice waited walked watched whispered whiteboy whitepeople window women yard