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sweetmusic22's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
This was the first time I've ever read any of Toni Morrisson's work. I've always been told that her work is beautiful but challenging (mentally, emotionally, and physically). By the time I got to start reading the book, it had taken me a while before I could really grasp Beloved's themes.
Pros: I loved the way that Toni incorporated poetry and metaphors in this book. Beloved is unlike any other story about racism and slavery that I've heard/read. One of my favorite parts of the book is when she talks about how her dead baby granddaughter haunts Beloved's character. For me, it opens up conversations about why it can be hard for people to escape their traumas. You learn from Beloved's experience what it's like to experience the pain and trauma of being a different skin color and experience what it's like to lose a child during childbirth. Beloved also opens up conversations about sexual assault and how it mentally affects people in a certain capacity.
Cons: A lot of the subject matter is a lot to handle, and the story is very slow-paced, so I had to take a lot of my time with this book. It took me a whole year to actually finish Beloved.
In conclusion, I gave this book 4.5 stars. I thought the book was so beautiful, powerful, and well-done. However, if you really want to read this book, you have to be prepared to take a lot of time with it. For me, I did 2 pages one day and then 3 pages the next. Then, I would do that as a routine with it until I was finished (today).
Pros: I loved the way that Toni incorporated poetry and metaphors in this book. Beloved is unlike any other story about racism and slavery that I've heard/read. One of my favorite parts of the book is when she talks about how her dead baby granddaughter haunts Beloved's character. For me, it opens up conversations about why it can be hard for people to escape their traumas. You learn from Beloved's experience what it's like to experience the pain and trauma of being a different skin color and experience what it's like to lose a child during childbirth. Beloved also opens up conversations about sexual assault and how it mentally affects people in a certain capacity.
Cons: A lot of the subject matter is a lot to handle, and the story is very slow-paced, so I had to take a lot of my time with this book. It took me a whole year to actually finish Beloved.
In conclusion, I gave this book 4.5 stars. I thought the book was so beautiful, powerful, and well-done. However, if you really want to read this book, you have to be prepared to take a lot of time with it. For me, I did 2 pages one day and then 3 pages the next. Then, I would do that as a routine with it until I was finished (today).
Content Warnings
Graphic: Emotional abuse, Hate crime, Kidnapping, Child death, Medical trauma, Physical abuse, Racial slurs, Racism, Rape, Sexual assault, and Slavery
Moderate: Death
Minor: Animal cruelty and Animal death
booksthatburn's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
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.
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.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child death and Death
Moderate: Sexual assault, Slavery, Racial slurs, and Racism
Minor: Ableism, Animal cruelty, and Animal death
CW for ableism, animal abuse (not depicted), sexual assault (not depicted), slavery (backstory), child death, pregnancy, childbirth, racial slurs, racism, assault, death.
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