Reviews - Beloved: A Novel

11.4k reviews for:

Beloved: A Novel

Toni Morrison

4.08 AVERAGE

mjeggers14's review against another edition

4.0

challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

alice_kingsleigh's review against another edition

4.75

dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Książka mnie movno uderzyła. Na początku nie mogłam w pełni ogarnąć języka, bo słuchałam audiobooka po angielsku, a sposób w jaki ta historia była napisana, okazał się dość specyficzny. Pomimo wielu metafor czułam niemal każde z wypowiedzianych zdań, dzięki namacalnym opisom.
Sama historia zawarta w tej książce była druzgocąca. Zabójstwo niemowlęcia przez własną matkę, żeby uniknąć niewolnictwa bardzo mocno mnie uderzyło. Nie miałam ani na moment bohaterce za złe i nie uważałam czynu za haniebny czy podły. Byłam jednak bardzo przygnębiona tym faktem. Czułam się jak bierny widz, który może jedynie stać i wsłuchiwać się w paskudne opowieści, które miały miejsce na tym świecie, mogąc to wszystko jedynie zaakceptować.
Uderzającą historia, ale na pewno warta poznania, jako coś ukazującego, do czego można doprowadzić ludzki umysł.

vegan_bookworm's review against another edition

5.0

My 5th Morrison as I chip away at them in publication order. To say this is brilliant is an understatement. So heartbreaking to watch the enslaved people go to hell and back, lose everything, afraid to love too deeply in case it’s snatched away from them by the whims of white men. The characters were all amazingly fleshed out, even secondary characters had something memorable about them so despite the brutality of the content, I enjoyed reading them whether they were likeable or not.

Content Warnings

zowho's review against another edition

5.0

medium-paced

“by and by all trace is gone, and what is forgotten is not only the footprints but the water too and what it is down there.”

replaceblue's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective tense

444gem444's review against another edition

5.0

The themes expressed in Morrison’s story are very real, factual, incomprehensible consequences of one of America’s darkest times. I went into this book almost blind and was completely wrapped up in how the deep deep traumas of slavery were expressed and imagined in a way I hadn’t been exposed before. Although each characters story was presented with vast differences in what they experienced, the traumas were elicited under the same conditions of extreme racial violence. Morrison focused on the impact of trauma blocking, the human psyches response when faced with the worst, the haunting of trauma and the transformation that occurs when continually faced with the hardest of hardships.

The story that played out throughout the book left me slightly confused with what was actually going on at 124, but I think it only added to the unbelievable reality of slavery and it’s irreversible stain on the African American people. The haunting of beloved was for me, symbolic of the inability to turn away from the fact that this time in history is very real and cannot be forgotten or taken as less than horrific. Denver represented the impact of her mother and fathers trauma and how for the generations to come after the height of enslaved America, life is forever impacted and can not be forgotten.