Reviews with content warning for Pregnancy - Beloved

This book was heartwrenching, disturbing, and quite scary in certain parts due to Morrison's ability to create tension. I would not recommend it to anyone who may be struggling with loss or who can be easily triggered by scenes of violence, although I'd be surprised if someone with even the highest desensitivity didn't react to some parts of this novel. I would encourage anyone who feels they can to read this book; it was an important, nuanced, and deep exploration of slavery and survival. Morrison's characters were as deep as they were interesting, full of nuance and moral ambiguity. The novel's focus on love, pain, and loss were brutally honest and painful, in parts making you question how much love can justify harm. The exploration of these themes through family and more specifically, through motherhood was beautiful but heartbreaking; the conspicuous and forced absence of paternity added a further dynamic to this pain, highlighting the purposeful construction of slavery to rob Black people of any semblance of human connection. Dehumanisation, and trying to rehumanise afterwards, is another main focus of the book and is beautifully woven into the other themes to create a powerful yet painful narrative.

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deedireads's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

All my reviews live at https://deedispeaking.com/reads/.

“Freeing yourself was one thing, claiming ownership of that freed self was another.”

I’ve been looking forward to reading Beloved since I started my project of reading all of Toni Morrison’s fiction (in order) earlier this year. It’s “the big one” — the one that won the Pulitzer and led her to win the Nobel Prize. I was obviously not disappointed. Incredible.

While the story is wholly original and not meant to be a retelling, Beloved was inspired by the story of an escaped enslaved woman named Margaret Garner, who killed her 2-year-old daughter to spare her from capture when slave hunters eventually found them. In Beloved, the house of the main character, Sethe, is haunted by the actual ghost of the daughter she killed. The book overall is about what it means to be free, how slavery impacts identity and memory, the impacts of community, and whether it is safe to love even if it means getting hurt.

Morrison draws you in and forces you to not to look away like pretty much nobody else who has ever lived. This book is raw and scathing and pulses like the open wound it means to expose.

I’ve said this with pretty much every Morrison novel I’ve read so far, but I can’t imagine reading this one without listening along to the audiobook at the same time. Morrison herself reads it, and her narration style is just as unique and breathtaking as her writing. It adds a whole layer of experience and meaning. Please listen to it.

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carolinalopes's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Loveable characters? It's complicated

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kylieqrada's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Another book that I am woefully inept to review. Toni Morrison's books are modern classics, but Beloved is... transcendent. I guess I will start by saying that I don't do ghost stories. I am at a point in my life where I know what freaks me out and I don't need to expose myself to those things. This is most certainly a ghost story (not a spoiler, it's in the synopsis). And the ghost is scary. She's not a nice ghost. No Caspers here. However, I didn't feel the need to put this book down or not read it before bed at any point. I wasn't scared by the ghost. The rest of the story on the other hand... It's almost as though Ms. Morrison was trying to contrast the horrors of slave life with the horrors of living with a violent poltergeist. And for Sethe and Denver, the horrors and consequences of slave life were so, so much worse. There were innumerable other themes and topics explored in this book, and the narrative style was very unique, in Ms. Morrison's classic way. It took me much longer than usual to read a book of this length, due to the incredible complexity of the work and the different facets to explore. I'm sure I'm missing so much, but what I did grasp, I will be thinking about and ruminating on for a long time.

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karingforbooks's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

It’s a good book and I understand why it’s got all the hype. It’s a vivid painful story of the horrors of slavery as perpetrated on one woman and her family, and the trauma that followed them through life.
I didn’t love the writing itself, though it’s well written, just not my style. Too repetitive, both in language and general plot points, especially toward the end. I liked all the motifs and how she wore them in. Don’t particularly care for the characters. Timelines were warped and that was confusing though about 2/3 through, you do get the full picture. Solid, but won’t ever be a favorite for me

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