Their Eyes Were Watching God

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Summary: Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus...and her name is Zora
Review: With breathtaking and insightful elegance, Hurston conveys the simplicity and complexity of a world now gone by. Her use of voice and poetic imagery is extraordinary -- and frequently misunderstood by the "simple" page-turning reader. This book must be read. Twice. Its power is surprising.

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Summary: Terrible
Review: After reading this book, I felt as if my intellectual freedom had been ground under by the iron boot of PC liberal thuggery. It's a sad, sad day for literature when a book like this can actually be required reading in schools. It lacked form, character development, and grammatical elegance. Most of all, it attempted to beat the reader to death with the "plight" of the author.

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Summary: Definitely from a higher power . . .
Review: In "Their Eyes Were Watching God," Hurston uses a blend of colloquialism and conversational writing to create an unexpectedly crisp and believable story. The tale of one woman's life is so simple yet so complicated and riddled with suffering that and reader would identify with her. This story does not get the respect and widespread acclaim that it deseres. read it, pass it to a friend. You'll gain something from it.

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Summary: Their Eyes Were Watching God was a great book.
Review: Their Eyes Were Watching God, by famed African American writer Zora Neale Hurston. The book about the life, loves, and maturing of a woman, Janie, iis superb.

Though the book begins slow, and some areas seem vague and irrelevant, after completion you will just sit there and think about it. I thought for a while and the book was excellent.

Well written, topped off with southern dialect that makes the story all the more imaginable, Their Eyes Were Watching God was a powerful book that you will surely never forget, and be incredibly inspired by.

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Summary: An American Literary Masterpiece!
Review: I have never been as moved by any book as I have with this one. Zora Neale Hurston created a magnificent story of a woman and the path that lead her to self fulfillment. Many say that this is a feminist book, I disagree. It is a story about tragedy, truimph, love and heartbreak. It's on the same shelf as Fitzgerald's "The Great Gastby" and Mitchell's "Gone With The Wind". You will not forget Janine Crawford, nor would you want to. After reading it, I felt renewed. This was the first book I've read of Zora Neale Hurston and I have been a fan ever since. Read it!

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Summary: Wonderful!
Review: I've turned many of my friends on to this book. The honesty and passion of this story defies description. I can't read the last sentence of it without crying my eyes out for every good reason that a person was meant to weep. Please read it. You'll be glad you did.

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Summary: The Way It Is
Review: This is an excellent book with in depth dialect that relates to her feelings an at sometimes seems to be lacking some clarity. She is brilliant author and continues to show her great mataphors of the evolution of a young girl into the kingdom of sexuality and maturity

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Summary: Unfulfilled potential
Review: I was really excited when I found out I'd be reading this book in English class because it had been highly recommended to me by a former teacher, but I'd been too lazy to get around to reading it.Strangely enough, I was disappointed. This spare, straightforward story about a young woman's lifetime pursuit of happiness in 1920s black America left me feeling empty and void. It wasn't bad by any means, but I just felt as if there could have been more, as if Ms. Hurston had just taken a beautiful turkey out of the oven but had forgotten to add the stuffing.Ms. Hurston writes in a mix of dialect which can be difficult to decipher (although it can be kind of cool to read aloud and figure out) and proper English. The contrast is strange, but doesn't really get in the way of the story.There was just SO much more Ms. Hurston could have done to help connect the reader to Janie's (the young woman) emotions and forge a strong identity for her that would have pulled the reader in to her world. Instead, to me Janie was just a husk, a purely two dimensional character confined within the pages of the book. She never came to life, and the same goes for all the other characters. Reading this book for me was just going through the motions, since that's what it felt like the characters were doing. There was plenty of dialogue, but no real meaning and connection. This was definitely a novel with a lot of potential which remained mostly unfulfilled

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Summary: I read it for a class, but I would read it again on my own!
Review: Hurston's poetic, yet direct and honest language set the perfect tone for this novel about a woman finding herself. It was wonderful to finally find a coming of age story that I could really identify with, even though I am not African-American. Hurston's ideas, characters and language are so fresh and unique. They are the change from the European-male literature that I have been unconsciously longing for for a long time. It is time that novels like this took over the mainstream

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Summary: A passionate, yet soul soothing literary experience.
Review: Their Eyes Were Watching God will cause you to quietly surrender your heart and soul to a beautiful life. The life of Janie Crawford is immediately identifable and moving. This book is about such a life. Hurston let's the reader witness the beginning of Janie's adult life and leads you to the fulfillment of Janie's entire being. Hurston doesn't allow you to witness the story, as much as transform the reader into the wind that blows through Janie's life. Hurston brings the harsh realities and the joy that Janie experience in a soft, yet forceful light, that it's almost like feeling the knockout punch of a heavy weight, with his glove wrapped in cotton! I can't recommend this novel highly enough. A definite must for every library! A marvelous piece of literature