Beloved

By Toni Morrison
1987
Rating: 10

This was a vexing novel for me. It’s without a doubt one of the foremost examples of the form written in the 20th Century, but for reasons I can’t quite articulate, I appreciate the scope of the achievement (towering), but in some ways could not connect with the story. That’s not a statement about the caliber of the story-telling, it’s more just an attempt to wrestle with my subjective response to the story.

I think the fact that Beloved is, among other things, a ghost story, kind of threw me. There may also have been a kind of claustrophobia that the book induced in me as well, and that may have been intentional. I don’t think that I struggled with it solely because the subject matter was grim, although the subject matter is of course very disturbing stuff.

I don’t know, I feel like I need to go back and look at my notes, I finished Beloved in November and maybe need to revisit it.