Beloved

by Toni Morrison

Paperback, 327 pages

English language

Published May 17, 1988 by Pan Books 1988. (Picador).

ISBN:: 978-0-330-30537-2

(112 reviews)

Beloved is a 1987 novel by the American writer Toni Morrison. Set after the American Civil War, it tells the story of a family of former slaves whose Cincinnati home is haunted by a malevolent spirit. Beloved is inspired by a true life incident involving Margaret Garner, an escaped slave from Kentucky who fled to the free state of Ohio in 1856, but was captured in accordance with the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. When U.S. Marshals burst into the cabin where Garner and her husband had barricaded themselves, they found that she had killed her two-year-old daughter and was attempting to kill her other children to spare them from being returned to slavery.

Morrison had come across an account of Garner titled "A Visit to the Slave Mother who Killed Her Child" in an 1856 newspaper article published in the American Baptist, and reproduced in The Black Book; a miscellaneous compilation of black history and culture that Morrison edited in 1974.The novel won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1988 and was a finalist for the 1987 National Book Award. It was adapted as a 1998 movie of the same name, starring Oprah Winfrey. A survey of writers and literary critics compiled by The New York Times ranked it as the best work of American fiction from 1981 to 2006.

17 editions

Jon Nixon reviewed Beloved by Toni Morrison

Review of 'Beloved' on 'Storygraph'

5 stars

This is an important book, I appreciate its genius, I’m glad I read it and I think everyone else should too, but it’s difficult to say I enjoyed it. It may be the most emotionally draining book I’ve ever read.

Running through the book is a ghost story about the spirit of a murdered child who comes back to demand the love she thinks she’s been denied, but it’s much more than that. The main story is slowly revealed through a tangle of flashbacks, showing the unremitting, dehumanising horror of slavery, which is so all consuming that one person cannot live through it unbroken. It takes the generosity and love of the whole community to redeem things at the end.

It’s a beautifully written book; every page is poetry and the characters are wonderful. This is the second Toni Morrison book I’ve read, and I will certainly read more.

niechec reviewed Beloved by Toni Morrison

Review of 'Beloved' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

Zasługujemy na nowe pl tłumaczenie

PanaX reviewed Beloved by Toni Morrison

Review of 'Beloved' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

I'm left speechless and muted.

bookmarc reviewed Beloved by Toni Morrison

Review of 'Beloved' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

So powerful, truly an important read. In a lot of ways the best book I’ve read about the atrocities of slavery in the US.
However, the writing style made it hard for me to get through or grow attached to the characters to feel the emotional impact I was expecting to feel.
But to be honest I’m not sure Beloved got a fair shot from me, as I probably wasn’t in the right headspace for it.

Definitely looking forward to checking out more Morrison!

sarah reviewed Beloved by Toni Morrison

masterpiece

5 stars

I don’t think I really grasped all of this when I read it as a 18yo when it was first published. The long histories of trauma and the grip of the past. It’s just a tremendous book and even now I feel like I am barely grasping its glimmers.

altlovesbooks reviewed Beloved by Toni Morrison

Review of 'Beloved' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

"To Sethe, the future was a matter of keeping the past at bay."

This will be a short review, not because I have nothing to say about it, but because all of the other 5 star reviews here do a better job than I ever could at summarizing what makes this such a good read. It is a hard read and a dense read, and I will freely admit to anyone who asks that I very nearly DNF'd this book early on because I wasn't sure I was understanding it. My only advice for anyone who tries this book out is to stick with it. It starts making a small bit of sense, then a larger bit of sense, and then suddenly pieces start falling together and you're now seeing why this book is so highly regarded. It was a very weird, very satisfying feeling.

All I'll say about this …

ElectricMari reviewed Beloved by Toni Morrison

Wow

5 stars

I love Toni Morrison. That's it. This book was a punch in the gut, a mysterious cloud of strong, hearthy smell envelopping you, the strongest and sweetest dark liquor, all given to you by the softest hands. Her style, oh her style! 🙌 You would not believe she was telling you the most heartwrenching goth story about a mother's love and slavery.

I'm a Toni Morrison stan.

Pretense reviewed Beloved by Toni Morrison

Review of 'Beloved' on 'Goodreads'

1 star

I read this book for a book club in April 2021. I did not start the book until I had submitted my term papers for the previous term, which only left me a few days to read this—I ended up not finishing it in time for the meeting, of course. (I had about 4 days, and this ended up taking me 13 days to read. I was in the hospital for some of that and very reluctant to pick this back up, but still.) Well, I at least appreciated the group discussions as they helped me understand the themes and plot of the novel a bit more. The first part of Beloved, I was completely ‘lost in the sauce’ as they say. Morrison loves to drop you in the middle of things without any warning or acclimation period. I had read The Bluest Eye, so I thought I would not succumb to the same confusion this time around… but while the The Bluest Eye was still somewhat sensible, Beloved really takes it to a whole other cognitive level. At least in the former, Morrison gives the reader the structure of the plot from the very beginning, so you aren't completely scrambling for purchase. The second part of the book completely ditches conventional writing standards and becomes more like a fever dream. The third is a mix of both, with some normal narrative tossed in so you do not go insane, presumably.

Let me be clear—I enjoyed the themes and plot of the novel. I love dark, gritty novels, and Beloved is not pulling its punches when it comes to the brutality and horrors of slavery and its legacy. However, in order to understand anything, you have to read the book several times, which takes a lot longer than you’d expect, because the prose is in such an overtly literary style. (And that’s only the prose—not counting the random moments Morrison jumps into verse or rhyme or paragraphs that go on and on for pages.) I guess some may call it postmodernist. What I do know is that this style is definitely not for me. I appreciate Morrison’s uncanny ability to manipulate the English language, so versatile and dazzling. But when I read a book and come away with not understanding what has happened at all, it can either be very good or terrible. Unfortunately this was the latter. I ended up glancing at SparkNotes every so often just to make sure I was ‘interpreting’ this book correctly. I also had a hard time keeping track of characters or understanding their motivations and perspectives.

If you enjoy stream-of-consciousness style writing and heavy-handed metaphors, you’ll love Morrison’s style. Unfortunately while I was able to get through The Bluest Eye feeling somewhat like I understood the point of the book, with Beloved I was just frustrated and confused. I wished I would have DNFed it several times throughout the book. For what it’s worth, Denver is my favorite character—perhaps because she has the clearest and most optimistic character arc, and possibly also because sections in the book from her perspective tend to have some semblance of coherence and normalcy. Then again, I suppose you could say that the disorder and disarray of the novel reflects the inner psyches of its characters, understandably traumatized by slavery—which is brilliant for a writer, of course, but not terribly fun for this reader.

Books That Burn reviewed Beloved by Toni Morrison

Review of 'Beloved' on 'Storygraph'

5 stars

Beloved begins as a slow-burning and haunting story about living on after the worst days, slowing winding around how to tell those days without shattering again.

The story rotates narrators and jumps back and forth in time in a way that was a little confusing at first, but the narrators have distinct voices and there’s mostly just Now and one big past event for each narrator as far as jumping around in time is concerned, so it became pretty easy to keep track of where the story was. The lack of demarcation with each switch helped to build the feeling that the past isn’t really gone for any of them. The story is about reckoning with the past in different ways, and how they deal with it. It’s also a ghost story, a haunting of the past refusing to leave. As the story develops it begins depicting the past events which were just hinted at earlier, circling back to them from different perspectives and catching slightly different bits of time surrounding a few very pivotal moments. It had the effect of helping me to ease into a very traumatic story.

The middle third of the book (leading up to the end of part 1) is absolutely devastating, enough story threads are in place for it to slowly wind to a set of riveting and horrifying explanations. This book is also filled with care, for the characters and the readers. The most brutal events are told from the perspective of someone who has already survived them (or who we know is around later on, at least), and that makes the current events feel manageable even when they’re differently awful. There are multiple narrators but it usually wasn’t hard to figure out whose perspective was in each section because their narrative styles were different enough to be distinct while having enough in common for the changes in POV to not be jarring.

I like the ending, it feels like it meets the characters at a place that makes sense for everything they've been through, both before the book began and during the main timeline. They're not all the way better, not by a long shot, but they're working on it, each in their own way.

& reviewed Beloved by Toni Morrison

Review of 'Beloved' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

i can't find my words rn. even if could, i don't think they would be enough.

sterrejl reviewed Beloved by Toni Morrison

None

4 stars

Very interesting novel! I loved the writing style. The parts about the murder of the baby were horrific, but those parts contributed to the strength of the story and the storyline.

Bryan Fordham reviewed Beloved by Toni Morrison

Review of 'Beloved' on 'Goodreads'

No rating

DNF, so not rating.

Could not get into it. Not sure why. Beautiful writing, interesting plot, but never really held me for some reason.

Kathrin Passig reviewed Beloved by Toni Morrison

Review of 'Beloved' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

Ein Buch mit vielen großartigen, souveränen Stellen, leider vor allem da, wo es um Leid und Verbrechen geht. Die positiven Stellen sind grotesker Kitsch. Nach den ersten 40 Prozent hat mir das Wechselbad keinen Spaß mehr gemacht und ich habe nur aus Pflichtgefühl zu Ende gelesen, drei Sterne als Kompromiss für "teilweise fünf Sterne, teilweise einer".

Nic Dafis reviewed Beloved by Toni Morrison

Review of 'Beloved' on 'Storygraph'

5 stars

Pam yn y byd dydw i ddim wedi darllen hon cyn nawr? Diolch, Backlisted.

Annette C. Boehm reviewed Beloved by Toni Morrison

Review of 'Beloved' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

Morrison's prose is powerful and really drew me in, but there is one scene of graphic violence (infanticide) that made me put the book down and not finish it. Friends have since told me that there is no more violence like this after that part, but I still don't feel like going back to it... I'm just a bit sensitive when it comes to that. Nonetheless, I feel that Morrison is a powerful writer and really deserves to be read.