From the Bookshelf of The Roundtable…

Beloved (Beloved Trilogy, #1)

Toni Morrison

Start date: May 1, 2020

Finish date: May 31, 2020

Discussion: Side Reads - Fiction

Why we're reading this: Because why read just Song of Solomon?
[close] Because why read just Song of Solomon?

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Side Reads - Fiction

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What Members Thought

Nov 29, 2018 El rated it really liked it

Shelves: library-borrow, 1001-books-list, 20th-centurylit-late, re-read-mania, the-novel-project

124 was spiteful. Full of a baby's venom. The women in the house knew it and so did the children.
(p3)

I first started to read this book in high school after borrowing my brother's copy of the book. But I was much too distracted of a teenager, and I'm sad to say that I didn't make it very far before putting it back on his bookshelf.

It was assigned reading in at least two (if not three) college classes. But I was much too distracted of a young college student, and I'm sad to say I don't think I ever actually finished reading it for any of the classes.

This is one of those books where I wouldn't know how to answer if someone asked if I read it. Did I? I couldn't remember all of the book, but I did remember parts of it. And those who know me well, know that I have a terrible memory. So it's possible I did make it through all of it at one time. It's also possible that I paid such good attention in my classes that I pieced most of the story together, and so I have this weird Frankenstein-memory of pieces of the story floating around inside my head, and whether or not that's my actual experience of reading it, or just fake-memories... well, who's to say?

Now, as a 40-year-old woman, I have no excuse. It was time to read it from cover to cover, on my own terms, at my own speed, with my own thoughts and feelings.

It's good I didn't read it in high school. It's probably even good that I didn't (or did I?) finish it in college. The point is: I wasn't ready for this book at any of those times. I wouldn't have been able to appreciate it as a snarly high school student, or even as an exhausted college student. But as an exhausted grad college student who happens to be on break before the next semester, I was able to connect to Morrison's story the way it deserves to be connected to - with my entire heart and all of my attention.

The details of the story are well-known that most of you know what it is about. And I won't go into too much of those details here because they can be found elsewhere by more eloquent readers and writers than myself.

This book requires your time. Your patience. Your feelings. Morrison doesn't want you to breeze through and shrug and say "Okay, next." At points in my past-life, that would have been me. But now I was able to spend the time with Beloved that she deserved. I could swim around inside Morrison's words and really feel Cincinnati the way Morrison wanted us to feel it, the way it might have been after the American Civil War. She infused poetry into her writing in that way Morrison often did, showing us how Baby Suggs laid down to think about colors, how Sethe and her daughter, Denver, dealt with the arrival of Beloved, the slow unraveling of the truth behind her appearance.

This is a beautiful book. It's been said time and time again, so this isn't news.

I'm never one to say you shouldn't read something assigned to you in class. But this is the perfect example how some books are meant to be read at the right time in our lives, which may not coexist with the class syllabus. Do the best that you can. And if you don't like it, promise yourself you will read it again as an older adult, after you've lived a little, when you have a little bit of breathing room, when you're ready to feel a particular kind of heartbreak. That's the case with any school reading assignments, but especially true for Beloved. Read it (or re-read it) when you're ready. ...more

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Jun 17, 2018 Alasse rated it really liked it

Shelves: feminists-and-friends, effing-disturbing, to-read-2018

Pulitzer Prize read for 2018.

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For some reason, I was expecting this to be harder and more obscure than it actually was. Maybe it's because it's one of those books that everyone in its country of origin had to read in high school. For me, on the contrary, slavery and its inheritance isn't something that's part of my collective conscience. So I figured that the lack of context might mean that this would read a bit alien to me - slavery is bad and all, but I'm not tapping into any collec ...more

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Jul 24, 2013 Heather(Gibby) rated it really liked it

Shelves: 1001-to-read

This was the first Toni Morrison book I have read. I get frustrated by magical realism, when I don't really know what is going on, but his story evolves in bits and pieces from the viewpoint of many of the characters. There is a tonne of symbolism and some pretty serious themes covered in the story. On its surface it is a story of those who endured slavery and then became free, and the lasting legacy their time as slaves have on their life, but Morrison's writing probes much deeper. ...more

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May 17, 2020 Lori rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: zy-own, 19th-century, fiction, literature, tbr-physically-here, america, roundtable, historical, zz-sync, pre-2000

Powerful.
Post-Civil War, post-Reconstruction Cincinnati, just over the Ohio River from Kentucky and thus where many escaped slaves became free
Being a slave was horrible in so many ways and this novel covers many of them and the scars they leave, both physical and emotional.
My first Toni Morrison, but not my last

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