Rating: 
Summary: Unwilling to let it end, I read it again right away.
Review: I read many parts aloud to myself
Rating:
Summary: Morrison's work leaves me speechless.
Review: I'll never forget the first book I read by Toni
Morrison: Song of Soloman. It was my first year in
college, American Literature, and her work still
amazes me for its beauty almost ten years later.
I cherish her work, especially Beloved, because it
tears me apart, makes me breathe, laugh, and cry and
choke on the bittersweetness of life.Morrison's work
frightens me, enlightens me and will mark my life forever. We are so privileged to have such an amazing and gifted writer sharing her ideas,her images of time and the love and work and pain of life as seen in the
particular and the eternal. Thank you Toni Morrison!
Rating:
Summary: A black woman's escape from slavery
Review: A book almost too painful to read, it reminds me in a way of the movie Schindler's list, very heavy with horrific images, make sure you pick the right mood to read this in. I enjoyed the author's going back and forth between past and present and switching between characters, it kept my attention. While I found the book easy to read it was certainly not light reading, this is a story of slavery in America described through the personal experiences of several characters. The main character Sethe is a black woman who escaped from slavery - when her "owner" tracked her and her children and was going to take them back, she actually killed one of her children rather than having her too experience life as a slave. The book begins 18 years after that event, and it is a story about facing ghosts from the past.Harsh as the book is, there are a few moments that are truly uplifting. The scene where Sethe has arrived at Baby Suggs' house of freedom and wakes up to her first days out of slavery thinking of what to do with the day and getting to know other black people as unique personalities for the first time. Also no matter how bleak the past, there's still a promise of something better for the future symbolized by the character of Denver. In spite of all, the human spirit survives.
Rating:
Summary: Pure Genius
Review: The writing in Beloved is nothing less than genius. Toni Morrison is at her absolute peak in this novel. I've read this book several times and each time I discover something new and amazing. Morrison masterfully weaves the construct of time into themes of this work. There are so many poetic, philosophical and spiritual nuances to this piece that I would do this novel no justice by trying to explain them or list them. Of the hundreds of books I've read in my life, Beloved is my favorite and I recommend it for anyone who enjoys reading....it is a treasure.
Rating:
Summary: Indelible footprint in American literature
Review: I understand some people's frustrations in reading this book. It's not a straight-forward "here's the plot and here's how it ends" kind of book. The plot or central theme of the book is simple enough, a slave-woman escapes to the free north and the aftermath of her supposed freedom. As in Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison uses magical realism to drive her story, it's reminiscent of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Isabel Allende. I think it adds an element to the book that heightens its emotions. Slavery is a difficult subject to write about, and to write about it from a personal viewpoint, rather than a historical viewpoint is even harder. I think Morrison has successfully done that in Beloved. To those who didn't understand the book or wanted to force it into something commonplace so it's more palatable to their pop-culture minds, I say to them, you're missing out on a great piece of American culture and literature. Those who didn't like it are probably young, undergraduate or high school kids who simply don't have the patience for a story that requires a lot of thinking and feeling. Also, I believe you have to know suffering or have the capacity to understand and relate to other people's suffering to fully appreciate this book. A young person or a person who has lived a life of privilege, be it financially or emotionally, will have trouble sharing the meaning of this book. It's true that the style of the book is different and combines elements of different writing formats. Morrison uses poetry and stream-of-consciousness style writing in parts of the book. You just have to take it for what it is and not fight it too much. It's a personal voice, a personal story, a personal pain. You don't have to get everything everyone writes. Focus on the beautiful story-telling and the emotions it stirs in you. American writing needs this willingness to experiment to create a different and distinct voice.
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful, sensual, daring...
Review: I absolutely love this book. It's certainly my favorite, and I've read it about 4 times through thus far. Everytime I opened it up and begun to read I realized that I found something new, a new perspective, hidden meaning, etc. that I thought wasn't there before. My first Morrison book was "The bluest eye" and she really caught my attention with that one, so I decided to read Beloved and was absolutely blown away by her astounding abilities as a writer. The only thing I didn't like the 1st time around is the open ended question in the conclusion that a reader can feel trapped in when she/he wonders where Beloved went, how, why...it takes patience :). Aside, it's magnificent! I recommend this book fully!
Rating: 
Summary: B-E-L-O-V-E-D...beloved
Review: Beloved, written by Toni Morrison, is set in rural Ohio several years after the Civil War. Sethe, one of the main characters, lives at 124 with her daughter Denver, mother-in-law Baby Suggs, and the ghost of the baby she murdered 18 years ago. When a strange woman named Beloved arrives at their house, Sethe is forced to confront her past, including murdering her baby girl. Beloved also makes Denver become more independent and self-sufficient.
Beloved acts as the catalyst in making Sethe remember her past. She asks questions that help to trigger painful memories, such as her illegal marriage to Halle, another slave. Sethe then finds out that Halle betrayed her in the worst way. Beloved's presence helps to fill in the gaps that Morrison leaves in the beginning of the book.
Beloved also helps Denver become an independent woman. In the beginning of the book, Denver is a recluse who rarely goes beyond the fence around the house in fear of the "evil thing" that made Sethe kill her baby so many years ago. However, when Sethe's attention turns to Beloved, Denver must start taking care of herself. She conquers her fear of the world beyond the fence and gets a job to support herself, Sethe, and Beloved.
I would recommend this book only to certain people. I would recommend this book to you if you had someone else to discuss it with. This book is difficult to read and just as difficult to understand. You also need to have a certain level of maturity to understand the meaning behind all of the swearing and graphic sexual content in this book. If you do read this book, I know that you will experience a powerful, moving novel.
Rating:
Summary: Magic done with words
Review: The painful memories, the dreadful experiences, and the hurt placed inside one's heart. Remembering the past is a thing some do not want to face.
This is the challenge that Sethe and Paul D have to face in Toni Morrison's Beloved, awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1988 for Fiction.
Set in the late 1800s in rural Ohio, shortly after the slaves were freed by the Emancipation Proclamation, Beloved is a novel about Sethe, a former slave who once worked at a slave plantation known as Sweet Home. Along with her daughter Denver, the two women reside at 124, a home haunted by the ghost of Sethe's murdered infant child. Paul D, another ex-slave from the Sweet Home plantation, visits Sethe at 124. It is he who forces Sethe to look back at her past experiences and reveal the secrets hidden within her. One day, a young woman named Beloved arrives at Sethe's home. Believed to be the embodied spirit of the dead child, Beloved's arrival causes chaos at 124. In her own way, Morrison causes chaos in the mind of the reader.
Many argue that Beloved is confusing and was not pleasurable to read, and I agree. But this is why Morrison is so effective in Beloved: she allows the reader to experience the flashbacks (known as "rememory") and the pain at the same time the characters are going through them in the novel. I have yet to read another novel that can make the reader suffer as much as the characters do.
Morrison varies her style of writing throughout the book to emphasize the thoughts of a certain character in Beloved. Although most of the novel is written in the third-person view, Morrison writes as Sethe, Denver, and Beloved in these "stream-of-consciousness" chapters. Sethe's lack of education is easily seen as she rambles on. Denver, on the other hand, seems to be an intellectual young woman who seeks to protect the loved ones she has. Beloved's erratic and haunting section adds to her mysterious appearance.
While reading Beloved, one must ask his or herself, "is Morrison racist?" There are many instances which hint Morrison is attempting to degrade the white race. Take schoolteacher, for instance. The name "schoolteacher" is not capitalized. Morrison implies that schoolteacher does not deserve respect and is low in social status, but his actions in the book prove otherwise. "Men without skin," a reoccurring image from the character Beloved, also refers to whites as being inferior to the blacks. Morrison speaks to the reader as if whites are void of life.
Beloved is a well-written novel that reveals the physical and emotional torture slaves had to endure, even long after their release from captivity. However, Morrison's graphic, detailed descriptions of horrific events may be sickening to the stomach for some readers. I was not fond of having to visualize human beings sodomizing cows, nor women bashing their own baby's head against a solid wall. Just for Morrison's magic in delivering this story to the reader, I recommend Beloved for most readers (some may be offended by the graphic images and themes in this novel).
Rating:
Summary: A Marvelous Achievement
Review: "Beloved" tells the story of survivors of slavery living in Ohio, before, during, and after emancipation: a mother, Sethe, who makes terrible sacrifices to save her family; a daughter, Denver, who was miraculously born on the road to freedom; and Paul D. who bravely comes to terms with inhuman attempts of slaveholders to destroy his soul and his sense of himself.
When a young woman named Beloved comes into their lives (no one is sure from where), she embodies the pain of slavery, the unrelenting anguish over the loss of loved ones, the rage and sorrows that are legacies of enslavement.
The novel gradually reveals its mystery and its meaning and tells of horrifying aspects of slavery. Toni Morrison's language is beautifully poetic. I will remember her vivid portrait of slavery, and the window she opens into the souls and psyches of her characters for a very long time.
Rating:
Summary: Beloved by LaShandra
Review: I think that Beloved was a great novel. It was very suspenseful. In a way it made me a little scared to finish. If you are not a comprehensive reader then you will have trouble with this novel. It tells of a dark-past that has came back to haunt Sethe. She is faced with the reality of how cruel,yet understood that killing her infant daughter was. She also tries to put her past at Sweet Home to rest. But simply can't bacause she has been scared so badly from her experiences that she has come to think of the one on her back as a chokecherry tree with different branches. As her daughter Denver is presented with some suspicious evidence, she then puts all the pieces together that would eventually lead up to the explaining of who the baby ghost was. She was indeed the ghost of the girl whom walked out of water from over there. Her sister Beloved. As Denver wanted to keep the secret dark and unknown, Beloved had other plans. She intruded in their house and came back for her family. As the story was brought to a close, it all made since to me why such actions had taken place. I was able to understand everything i hadn't understood in the beginning. This is a very complex book that should be read with very extreme cautions. I would recommend this book to anyone.
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