Rating: 
Summary: An excellent book
Review: I found this book insightful and thought-provoking. I could relate very much to the character of Jadine, and to her situation. I found this very refreshing, because it is not every day that an author tackles the issues of skin color, education, and class-- issues that are prevalent in the lives of many Black Americans. Toni Morrison takes us inside the heads of all of her characters. She does not have to try to avoid stereotypes, because she develops all of her characters so fully that the reader ultimately sees them all as human beings. I have never seen an author more successful at doing this. Tar Baby is a difficult book, but it is worth it. It is one of those books that will leave you different after you have read it.
Rating: 
Summary: Role-Reversals
Review: In Tar Baby, Valerian Street, a wealthy white candy mogul, suffers some devastating role reversals. This situation has nothing to do with "political correctness" but rather the truth of the fact that no one can mastermind and counterfeit a reality forever. Valerian cannot grow Pennsylvania plants in L'Isle de Chevaliers any more than he can recreate the racial, economic, and sexual hierarchy that existed there. This point is not "a rip-off from real life" as one amazon.com reviewer described it. Nor is it, to my mind, her most profound. I agree that _Beloved_ soars higher. I think the "trick" to reading Morrison is reading at your own level. I read many of her books as a young teenager and enjoyed them merely for their plots. I liked them because the people were fascinating and the suspense was real. Morrison hadn't won the Nobel or been championed by Oprah Winfrey, so I didn't have her reputation to contend with. And I didn't feel that my intelligence or sophistication depended on understanding her every word. So if I couldn't understand something, I moved on with the story. Now that I am in college, and an English major, I understand much more of Morrison's art as I re-read the novels of my adolescence. However, if I don't understand the significance of some image or passage, I let it go. Then I talk to someone about it. One cannot read Morrison's academic and artistic novels any other way. Although it doesn't have to be drudgery, Morrison's books are meant to be "studied" (which is just a fancy way of saying "discussed"). If you are intimidated by the Morrison mystique, I recommend leaving one's ego at the door when entering Morrison's world. Then, I recommend talking to someone more familiar with Morrison's work before you cast her books aside.
Rating:
Summary: Didn't understand it all. but liked it.
Review: OK, I didn't understand all of this novel, but I liked it. Being a 46 year old while male I probably never will undestand it all. How ever, I can report that the character studies of Valerian Street and his wife ("The principal beauty of Maine") are some of the most devistatingly accurate upper class character studies I've ever read, and very funny in a vitriolic way. This is my introduction to Toni Morrison, and I plan to read more.
Rating:
Summary: Tar Baby
Review: Although I have read every book by Toni Morrison and feel that she is one of the most important and impressive writer of our time, Tar Baby will always have a special place in my heart. I have read this book about 4 or 5 times and it seems that with each reading I delve deeper into the plot, deeper into the psyche of her characters. While Jadine may be shallow on the surface, a "tar baby" constructed to keep the black man in his place, she is also made up of the substance that has held the black community together through so many struggles. Her counterpart, Son is a strong, black men and may never really find a place in society for himself because of what he represents. This book is about an unlikely love between two people that would have been a perfect match in a environment not motivated by race, class or pedigree. Tar Baby is the most underrated Morrison novel. It's a great read and I would recommend it to anybody.
Rating:
Summary: Wait A Minute....
Review: This book is getting trashed, and unfairly so. Tar Baby is not her finest work (Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon and Beloved are her classics) yet this book is one of the best written in recent history. Yes. That is how powerful her writing is; this is not her best but it still stands as one of the peaks in modern literature. The poetic images, Biblical, social, and personal symbolism and relations are what makes Morrison the quintessential; and make her average work, still far above others' best. The book is not an easy read. This is not reading the daily paper. Just like anything in life, what is worthwhile takes focus and time. I can whip through the works of Crichton and Grisham in a month and still would not get the knowledge and perspective that Tar Baby or almost any Morrison novel can offer. If you want a light, airy read never take on the challenges of Morrison. If you want literature that has weight and an array of beautiful images and philosophies then Tar Baby! is worth the effort of resisting the quick read and delving into this text.
Rating:
Summary: Mesmerising tale of gender & racial politics
Review: I chose "Tar Baby" for my first Toni Morrison read. It may not be the most natural place to start, nor is it her most celebrated novel. I guess I was intrigued by its subject and the blurb at the back of the book. I wasn't disappointed. As many online reviewers have pointed out, Morrison isn't easy to get into. She can be abstract, even a little obscure in her prose, so you have to concentrate to grasp her message. But I was richly rewarded for my efforts. "Tar Baby"'s multifaceted treatment of gender and racial politics is simply outstanding. She deals with male/female, black/white, parent/child, rural/urban issues, using a plot and a fascinating cast of characters for every last bit of irony inherent in the material. It would make a great movie. Valerian Street escapes to the Caribbean but locks himself in a greenhouse fitted to recreate the familiar environment he seeks to escape from. He is patron to Jadine, material girl and educated niece of his black servants, Sydney and Ondine, yet condescending in his relationship with blacks. He is smug and openly contemptuous of his wife Margaret's bimbo background but isn't remotely prepared for the shock that awaits him when the past is revealed. The big showdown scene between the Streets and their servants in the middle marks an the early climax from which nobody - including the plot - quite recovers. Intentionally or not, it upstages the tumultouse love affair between Jadine and black intruder, Son. Both are black, but that's about as much they have in common with one another. Will they succeed in overcoming the deep cultural divide that separates them ? I won't spoil it for fellow readers. Read the ending and figure it out for yourselves. "Tar Baby" was a fantastic reading experience for me. I loved the book so much I didn't want it to end. Truly.
Rating:
Summary: A Shocking Socioeconomic Prescription!
Review: In reading Toni Morrison's striking novel Tar Baby, I came to characterize Jadine as a cultural orphan. The two often times conflicting worlds of white and black juxtapose along the lines of social, cultural and political demarcation. In the midst of such duality exists the character of Jadine, who symbolizes a contemporaneous example of the black female in a post-Civil Rights moment. Jadine is a woman who is educated, elevated and moneyed and in sharp contrast to the perceived notions of what it means to be black and female in a time of vast social and political change. Jadine is a woman trying to escape the stigma associated with her class position. Her family has money, but finds it hard to truly identify with them. She has no allegiance to African-American cities; she had received an education at the Sorbonne and was afforded the kind of lifestyle that is alien to many African-American women of her time. Jadine finds herself torn between the black world and the white world, fitting into neither. She equates her position as a black female in the culture through two dogs copulating in a street in Baltimore, Maryland. She is in a working-class situation and does not enjoy it - especially since she witnessed the "other side of the tracks," figuratively speaking, and saw life through the rose-colored lenses of the white world. Jadine is part of a new generation - one that did not grow up in a segregated society. The culture she is in and the lifestyle she inherited is predominately white - her upbringing, her education and her outlook. African-American culture is a hybrid culture, leading one to wonder why Jadine would be viewed as a cultural orphan, but there are political reasons, which determine why we rally under the flag of race or gender or sexual preference, etc. There is a change in the culture and Jadine is reflective of such change in a culture that has always been hybrid since its very beginnings. Toni Morrison, through the characterization of Jadine in the novel of Tar Baby is trying to redefine the parameters and scope of the term "culture" and gerrymander its boundaries.
Rating:
Summary: Passion
Review: Name the big Black romance novels. I dare you. Name them all. Ok, five, name five romance novels centralized around Black characters, in love, loving, making love, living well, being well that doesn't have four women as successful best friends?
Go ahead, I'll wait.
Toni Morrison is not easy. Do not mistake her ever for easy, do not mistake her subject matters for simple to pierce or to understand. I agree with the previous reviewer, people expect books to be like TV. And they aren't. Good books anyway. Books that are literature. This book is literature.
Hopefully more will come along, more romance that mean something, that say something about culture, about color, about power and the abuses.
Son is all of the projected racial fears and Jadine is the homogenized Black America wants Black people to be/to become. Grateful and still on some level serving in the kitchen (Sydney and his wife). Black people are required to be so much within this world, this America. Savage, erudite, butler, maid/cook and yet all of the characters here in the book, that are White, are one form (rich) here. White is a decision to be, to be a thing, rich, poor, bohemian, angry, depressed, rebllious, vane, but all that is shiftable, malleable. Black however is static from White perception and being Black from the inside out? That's birth from a dead womb.
Rating:
Summary: Black And White And A Whole Lot More
Review: _Tar Baby_ tells of the relationships of a wealthy white couple, Valerian and his wife, Margaret, and a black couple, Sydney and Onadine, who have been their servants for many years. The setting is a manor on an island in the Caribbean. One of the subplots concerns Margaret's tortured relationship with her estranged son, Michael. Onadine shares a terrible secret with Margaret concerning the son. Adding to the novel's complexity is the black couple's beautiful niece, Jadine, who lives with them and who has received an education at the Sorbonne, paid for in entirety by Valerian. Jadine finds herself torn between the black world and the white world, fitting into neither. To further complicate matters, Jadine later falls in love with a handsome black man who is called "Son," among other names, who has hidden himself in one of Margaret's closets after jumping ship. He is also on the lam due to his previous commission of a foolish crime of passion. Realizing her potential, Jadine is frightened of being trapped, like the limited, poorly educated, dirt poor women whom she meets while on an extended visit to Son's friends and family in Florida. Jadine is suffocating in this atmosphere, and is particularly haunted at night by obesssive thoughts of the women. To Jadine, Son will always remain their "son," an ignorant and irresponsible child, without any direction in life. This deliciously complex novel of race, family, and above all, human relations, could only have been done justice by writer of the caliber and sensitivity of a Toni Morrison. Ms. Morrison, an African-American and a woman, is able to find the nuances and subtleties inherent in the black experience that someone else would have difficulty understanding. _Tar Baby_ is a triumph in every way.
Rating:
Summary: AmErICaNiSm - bOOk cHaT rEvIeW
Review: "Tar Baby" by Toni Morrison sets off on the Isle des Chevalier where Valerian and Margaret Street lived in the fancy rooms upstairs and the colored servants; Ondine and Sydney lived in the second-hand use furniture downstairs. Along with the other members of the household lived the servants' niece, Jadine, who stayed occasionally when she was away from modeling in Paris of New York. During the vacation stay, Margaret awaits for the arrival of her son, Michael who is supposed to show up for Christmas. But the cynical Valerian doubts his visit because of a mysterious reason. Amidst the waiting, one night, Margaret discovers a big black man hiding in her closet. Everyone is alarmed of his trespass, except for Valerian. Not only is Valerian calm of his trespass, but also invites this man to the dinner table. While Margaret, Sydney, and Ondine disapprove of this "nigger," Valerian gets to know him better and a special, but strange relationship develops between Jadine and the mystery man. Finally, Christmas time comes and the family still awaits Michael. Not only does his visit become questionable, but also trouble arises the dinner table when both the colored and non-colored are seated together. I highly recommend this book to someone who is willing to appreciate Morrison's vivid descriptions. Some drawbacks are the overuse of information, but is still worth reading. This book is rather complicated and keeps you hanging on what will be on the next page, but is worth the time to read.
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