A review by casskrug
Sula by Toni Morrison

5.0

my own lack of focus got the best of me during this reread 🥲 keeping my original 2022 rating of 5 stars because my struggles were not due to the book itself. i absolutely loved this book when i first read it and i think i would’ve had a tough time reading any book last week because i was a busy bee!

sula is the story of nel wright and sula peace, 2 girls growing up in the town of medallion, ohio in the 1920s. they have an intense friendship throughout their childhood and teenage years, and their relationship as adults is full of betrayal and complicated feelings. 

i feel like i had a harder time getting into the story now than i did the first time around. morrison does a lot of exposition about the history of the town and the families. already knowing some of what was coming made the exposition less enthralling during my reread. having no idea what was going to happen the first time around made me desperate to fly through the opening. 

morrison renders the complicated female relationships in the wright and peace families with so much nuance and emotion. her writing is so descriptive and evocative without doing too much - there’s a blunt edge to certain scenes that puts your jaw on the floor. those scenes have been etched in my mind since my first reading and it was really interesting to return to them now and see how morrison put the pieces into place.  

in the second half, morrison goes really deep into a character study of sula specifically, analyzing her motivations and personality in contrast with nel. she really paints the picture of how differently the two women are received by their community, and how different their thought processes surrounding relationships and betrayal are. 

i found the introduction, written by morrison, to be really insightful as far as the themes of escape, sexual and economic freedom and how they influence people’s perceptions, and the intersection of race and gender. she talks about where she was in her life when she wrote sula and changes she made to the structure of the book, so you get more of a look into how she was working at the time. i always love to hear about a writer’s process so this was a treat for me!

i still stand by this being a must-read, but only pick it up when you have the ability to get swept up in the story!