If Beale Street Could Talk in Never too Late to Read Classics

May 24, 2023 Book2Dragon rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: classics, favorites, owned, fiction, historical-fiction

I read this years ago, but James Baldwin is a wonderful writer

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Jul 26, 2019 Kelly_Hunsaker_reads ... rated it it was amazing

Shelves: read-in-2019, american-lit, classics, history, historical-fiction

James Baldwin is a master with words. His stories are deep and resonant, timely and heart-wrenching. He lets the reader become friends with his characters. We get to experience the love, hope and pain alongside them.

"I thought of Fonny’s touch, of Fonny, in my arms, his breath, his touch, his odor, his weight, that terrible and beautiful presence riding into me and his breath being snarled, as if by a golden thread, deeper and deeper in his throat as he rode--as he rode deeper and deeper not ...more

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Feb 20, 2023 Yair Ben-Zvi rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites

A truly gorgeous love story that perfectly negotiates the line between the tragic grit of lived-in experience with the sublime and even Byronic flights that all passionate human love can create. I love it and cannot recommend it enough, James Baldwin was and is one of the few truly great writers this country has produced.

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Sep 06, 2019 Ellen Librarian rated it really liked it

I expected this book to be dark and brooding, instead I found it sweet and even hopeful. It's beautifully written, even if I had a problem with the first person narrator turning into an omniscient one. I listened to it as an audio book and the narrator was one of the best ever. ...more

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