4.5 Almost went down to 4.25 because of the extremely spoilery introduction of middling quality that is longer than the short story and the fact that selling a 6000-word story with some light academic commentary as a 14.50 € hardcover is really dubious. But then that's hardly the author's fault.

Read the short story first! Toni Morrison does a really neat experiment that went almost perfectly for me and I think the problem where it breaks down might have something to do that I am not an American reader born in 1960 or so.