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A review by steveatwaywords
Sula by Toni Morrison
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-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
5.0
Sula, like so many of Morrison's works, is both raw and lush. There is an exquisite peeling away of characters and places which leaves their set-upon lives tormented and ambiguous, people neither virtuous nor wicked, just people breaking and broken. And, of course, the masses of hypocrisies which surround them meanwhile.
Images here will never leave me: hands which slip, arms which open, feet that land and that do not -- the (ir)responsibility of childhoods, the desperation against aloneness, the sacrifices.
Each of our lives intersects and encapsulates; we sublimate and revise our guilts; so too does this novel work upon us, compelling us to peel back and see up close, to admit, to understand. Sula upends our own comfort even while we weep for its people.
Images here will never leave me: hands which slip, arms which open, feet that land and that do not -- the (ir)responsibility of childhoods, the desperation against aloneness, the sacrifices.
Each of our lives intersects and encapsulates; we sublimate and revise our guilts; so too does this novel work upon us, compelling us to peel back and see up close, to admit, to understand. Sula upends our own comfort even while we weep for its people.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Sexual content, Violence, and Injury/Injury detail