In Search of the Color Purple

An epistolary novel.

It's set in the southern USA in the 1930s & 1940s. and is about the life of a poor black family there.

Celie is raped by her stepfather and has a couple of children who disappear. She is then more or less forced to marry a man, Albert ____, who doesn't love her and treats her badly. Celie is gay and doesn't love him. Initially the story is told in a series of letters she writes to God.

Celie's sister Nettie goes to Africa as an au pair with a couple of missionaries and their adopted children, and writes to Celie, with descriptions of what is happening in the place where they live. This, for me was the best part of the book, reminiscent, in a way, of [b:The Poisonwood Bible|7244|The Poisonwood Bible|Barbara Kingsolver|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1644073807l/7244.SY75.jpg|810663]. It describes how an overseas rubber plantation company dispossesses the local people. forcing them to move off their land and destroys their way of life -- "expropriation without compensation" is the latest political buzz-phrase for that kind of thing.

Celie, however, doesn't at first receive her sister's letter, because her husband hides them, but nevertheless switches from writing to God to writing to her sister. Celie eventually leaves her husband, finds someone who loves her, and starts a business, but things go wrong again.

In many ways it is a very sad book, all about people's messed up relationships, and how they manage to cope with them. I also found it quite a complex book, and had to read the first few chapters again when I was halfway through, just to keep track of the characters' relationships.

I'm glad I audiobooked this, because I have a dreadful track record with anything written in dialect--my brain processes the written version as basically a different language for some reason?--but listening to it made it very easy to follow.

That doesn't mean this wasn't a hard read.

I don't want to suggest that's a bad thing, because that's definitely what it was going for, but the things these women go through is rough, and I had to set it down for a bit to try to get into a better headspace and distract myself with something lighter.

I managed to go into this basically blind--I knew it was considered a modern classic and I remembered something from my childhood about Oprah being involved in a film version (?), but beyond that, all I knew was that it was not fantasy or science fiction, really. I like that I went into it knowing so little, because as things start being said, often casually by a narrator who doesn't really understand what they mean or how horrible they are, it hit a lot harder than it would have had I known more or was expecting it.

People can probably provide lovely synopsis and explanations of why this is a classic and important. I can't really say anything further except that this IS a book everyone should probably read, I'm glad I read it, for all the raw emotions it evoked, and it's one of those books that will stay with me enough that I'm not sure I could quite bear to re-read it and feel everything again.