Toni Morrison – Beloved

ISBN: 0099273934

Probably my favourite book of all time: read it after requesting the novel as a leaving present and was staggered at its transcendent humanity. I felt that this was a writer who truly knew things; a writer who dared to listen compassionately to the abject depths of human experience; who dared to confront truly ‘discredited knowledge’. For Morrison delivers a novel so soaked in mourning that the narrative has to defer its acts of ‘telling’ so that the reader only comes to grasp at its meanings significantly and painfully later. And through this delayed narrative, the reader finds unnervingly visionary expression for human suffering ;

‘There is a loneliness that can be rocked. Arms crossed, knees drawn up; holding on, this motion, unlike a ship’s, smooths and contains the rocker. It’s an inside kind-wrapped tight like skin. Then there is a loneliness that roams. No rocking can hold it down.It is alive, on its own. A dry and spreading thing that makes the sounds of one’s feet going seem to come from a far-off place.’

Morrisons’s gift to her reader is this monumental ‘yes’- this is what living and loving means.

Reviewed By: Tusitala

Posted in Book Reviews