Rating: 
Summary: hahahahahahah...poseurs
Review: Think you are smarter than everyone else?
Understand the plight of African-Americans more than anyone, because you are open-mined, unlike the conformist masses?
Then this book is perfect for you! Now, am I racist? Of course not. Is it that I have a problem with offensive or "provocative" material...no, I love Amistead. Unfortunately, with a touchy subject such as race issues in America, it's hard to actually critique a book for its content, instead of its message. But if you want to see a real piece of art dealing with slavery, watch Amistead...much better.
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Summary: Simon Says, "Heaven Holds a Place for Those Who Pray"
Review: . . . . . . . I have not read this book but saw the movie a number of years ago. Having read a recent published interview of Toni Morrison and the one-paragraph description of Beloved, then considering a concept I have come to perceive so far, it is good to consider the nature of plea itself, in this case, possibly the plea: Come, Sweet Jesus. This world can be more hell than hell. Since I decide to ascribe a promising irony to the concept of heartrending plea, I also decide that surely every such plea to God is gravid with the possibility of possibilities, that plea reaches grace and brings grace more closely still. However, do not equate murder with any kind of righteous plea. Some other writer, not carrying the adjective, Holy, is the author of murder. Murder, of any kind, is the result of insanity, also an attempted manifestation of the bad one. Because Toni Morrison depicts murder and insanity so eloquently in Beloved does not mean necessarily that she condones them or their inspiration. God does not ask that we, too, sacrifice our children. Can you guess who might? How much compassion might God have for every such oppression within oppression? How much anger at its inspiration? My plea? Come, Sweet Jesus. This world can be more hell than hell. My faith? Hello, Christ . . . Beloved. What's that you say? Paradise is upon us? Whoa, Nelly! . . . . . . . By the way, these reviews are not offerings to a computer, to a web, nor to Amazon dot com, though Amazon claims otherwise. They are fellowship offerings to other human beings passing my way. . . . . . . .
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Summary: Heartbreakingly Gorgeous
Review: I have to admit that I really don't know what to say about this book. I do know that no words could ever do it justice, but it's so wonderful, and my experience of it was so life changing, that I feel I must say something. BELOVED is based on a true story, which makes the book all the more heartbreaking. It concerns an ex-slave named Sethe who kills her baby daughter rather than see her live a life of total misery and degradation. "Beloved," as the murdered daughter is called, is something like the past. She is not about to stay "dead and buried," and she returns to haunt both Sethe and Sethe's other daughter, Denver, just as the dark specter of slavery haunts us all, no matter what our color or ethnic background. The characters in BELOVED may try to "put the past behind them," but life, itself, won't let them. Life forces them to come to terms with the past before it even considers letting go. BELOVED is a beautiful book because of Toni Morrison's lyrical, beautiful, mesmerizing prose and because of the life and love with which she infuses her characters. It is a horrifying book because of what Beloved represents-the intense pain and suffering of an entire generation of black slaves at the hands of merciless white owners. Being so filled with pain and heartbreak, BELOVED is not an easy book to read, but it is, nevertheless, compelling...more compelling than any other I've ever experienced. The characters in BELOVED are so believable, so real, so intensely alive that I had a hard time believing Morrison wove much of the story from her own imagination and that only the "bare bones" were fact. So many times, I could almost feel my heart breaking for Denver, for Beloved, for Paul D. and most of all, for Sethe, whom I loved with all my heart...but I couldn't put the book down. In fact, I never even considered putting it down. BELOVED isn't a long book, but it's one that's quite dense with both subplots and symbolism and meaning. There's Ella, a woman determined to put the past in the past. There's Denver, Sethe's living daughter, a teenager whose world is composed of little more than her mother and the ghost of her dead sister. There's Baby Suggs, Sethe's mother-in-law, who insists that a house not filled with the sorrow of the Negro race simply can't be found. And, there's Paul D., the only male slave to escape from the "Sweet Home Plantation." His love for Sethe is real and lasting and beautiful, but is love alone enough to overcome the horrors of a past so painful it colors your every waking moment? Despite the questions raised in BELOVED and the issues it encompasses, Morrison has given us a gorgeous, and gorgeously heartbreaking, story in the book. She has wisely avoided any temptation to stray into polemic. Her language is dazzling, mesmerizing, haunting, heartbreaking, terrifying, graceful, beautiful, luminous, lyrical. This book is a highly polished masterpiece and, whether you like it or not, I think any sophisticated reader would have to admit that it's brilliant beyond comprehension. It is truly faultless. I can't praise this book highly enough. For me, this is quintessential black American literature. It epitomizes the black experience in America and it encompasses all the pain. Toni Morrison is no doubt the finest living author and, perhaps, the greatest female writer of all time. BELOVED is her masterpiece. If you miss it, you won't be cheating anyone but yourself. Not only recommended, but required.
Rating:
Summary: Thank you
Review: Thank you Mrs. Morrison, for proving that the art of writing is alive.
Rating:
Summary: If it ain't Thick, it ain't Love.
Review: It's hard to envisage a tree fully grown on a woman's back. Heavy to ideate how a motherhood can slay her nestlings, or even conceive of doing away with them never mind the perils. Morrison's Sethe, the purportedly free black woman, hastens her four children towards a confrontation with a white, remorseless life. Using a saw, she attempts to kill them, hence deter a white order from thieving them away into a life of slavery. Her two boys and a newborn, Denver, pull through after getting severely injured, but she kills her toddler who was still hanging to her embrace, breastfeeding on blood, when Sethe was captured in the act. Beloved, the girl, may have "returned," or may have not. At any rate, Morrison's novel is a tour de force manifesting a tenacious narrative of a race - its dehumanization, denudated choice, swiped rights not only to dignity but also to life itself. Beloved is a chef-d'oeuvre in the African-American canon, written by an uncompromising Nobel Laureate who knew how to rewrite a history of a people with a superbia innocent of sin. Morrison's tale is about a love incomprehensible to the preposterous; a love too imposing to psychoanalyse, take apart, or be in tune with leniency. It's a tale about trauma brocaded by a life overly cold-blooded to understand; a trauma that a black woman, like Sethe, could pacify only when she looks it in the eye. When we speak of Jazz, Tar Baby, Sula, Song of Solomon, Love, and The Bluest Eye, we speak of a Toni Morrison originative, emotive, and deep. When we speak of Beloved, we speak of a Toni Morrison nonpareil; one who mysteriously sings to life's absurdities, which are ultimately humbled and mortified by her prowess.
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Summary: Beloved: A Unique View of Slavery
Review: Toni Morrison's Beloved is a captivating novel. As I read through it, I started thinking to myself, this is one of the best stories that I've ever read. At first, I didn't think that it would be worth my time to read the book, but the more I read, the better it became. Beloved is the story of a freed slave named Sethe who has had one of the roughest lives imaginable. The theme of slavery already made me feel a need to explore the tale. From what I know about slaves and their lives in the past, I wondered what this woman's story would be like. What could have happened to this slave to make her life story different from all of the others that suffered the same fate as she did? I soon found out what makes this story so unique. Sethe's troubles come from her past, which haunts her. She runs away from her master and takes her three children with her; another one is born on the way. After experiencing a small taste of freedom, her fears suddenly return when she is found. In order to keep her children from experiencing the same plague of slavery as she had, she takes matters into her own hands and decides to kill them. Now, in the present, the ghost of the one daughter she managed to kill haunts her house causing her youngest child Denver and her to live in seclusion. They have no choice but to live in the haunted house, which no one in the neighborhood dares to go near. Symbolism is one of the tools most used in the novel by the author. Morrison uses it to tell two stories at once. The literal meaning shows the reader the story of Sethe, the brutal memories of her past, and how it effects the people around her. At the same time, the alternate meaning being presented includes the evils of slavery and the injustice done to the blacks by the whites. Although the past lives of the characters include slavery, the story is mostly about their present lives and the choices they've made in the past. An example of this is clearly seen in the fact that Sethe killed her child to keep her from becoming a slave. The novel is excellent. Beloved is unlike any story you've ever read. It gives you a better understanding of slavery and discusses gender and racial issues. I liked it because of the author's unique style of writing. The imagery is terrific, the characters' points of view are very detailed, and the themes are very compelling. I enjoyed it very much, and anyone who hasn't already read it should read it as soon as they can.
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Summary: grossed out, but still impressed...
Review: Beloved by Toni Morrison is a colorful novel often filled with revolting imagery. Morrison uses powerful words of imagery so that the reader can empathize with the horrible treatment of slaves. In this book, the main characters are haunted by their past lives of slavery. The dehumanization leaves the reader with an unsettling feeling.
Morrison also uses a lot of racist slurs and ideas in this novel, to implement the idea that slaves were property. Slaves were called [derogitory names ] and treated like creatures. Due to all of the racial slurs and ideas in this book, it would be easy to generate the assumption of Morrison being racist; however, she uses racial slurs and ideas to present a historical view into the actual conditions of slavery before and after the Civil War.
Although the reader may be repulsed by certain parts of the novel, this repulsion is necessary. Morrison does an excellent job of writing a novel that greatly impacts its readers. The novel is very educational in a historical sense. The words and imagery in this novel force people to look for racism in their own lives, just like the characters in Beloved who were forced to deal with the effects of racism in their lives.
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Summary: may not like, must read
Review: Toni Morison's Beloved is an unflinchingly honest portrayal of what it was like to be an African American slave in the US. The images of brutality and prejudice are extremely intense, often distasteful, but what really shows you the dehumanizing aspects of slavery are the effects that it has on her characters. The most chilling example is of course Sethe, who kills her infant daughter with a saw to keep her from being brought into slavery. Many people say that this act was inexcusable, and in a way it was, but this only underlines the fact that we cannot ever fully comprehend what slavery was like. The fact that a mother would kill her own daughter in order to keep her from slavery shows that it must truly be horrible, and, though you may never be able to reconcile yourself with that act, Morison's book may be the closest you get to understanding the experience of belonging to another human being. The story rotates around Sethe, an ex-slave from a plantation called Sweet Home, her daughter Denver, and Paul D, another ex-slave from Sweet Home. These characters are all affected by the ghost of the child Sethe killed, and her manifestation, Beloved. T Supernatural phenomena are an integral part of the book, and the characters accept these as normal, never questioning their existence. The characters trigger frequent flashbacks in each other, and much of the background is laid in this manner, the story coming together like a puzzle as the details supplied by each "rememory" fall into place. "Rememory" and "thought-picture" are good examples of the way that Morrison uses language to enrich the experience of reading the book. Not only her dialogue, but the narration uses delightfully appropriate colloquialisms and slang such as the "crawling-already-baby." While Beloved contains a lot that you may think distasteful or gratuitous, and you may not like the book or the subject matter, I think everyone should read it anyway, because it is the kind of book that affects you, makes you think and, in the end, leaves you with the feeling that it has some how changed you, subtly altering your outlook on the world, though you may not be able to say how.
Rating: 
Summary: Up To You
Review: Toni Morrison displayed her extraordinary talent as a writer with her novel Beloved. She magnificently painted the picture of the trials and tribulations of African-Americans in post-Civil War America. Morrison created images and spawned emotion with her powerful words. However, Morrison was unable to create an entertaining story. The images she created were often distasteful and took away from the impact the story had on me. I believe the author intended to provoke mixed emotions and mixed reactions. If this is so, she succeeded. However, Morrison failed to get her point to the reader. She suggests many things, but never displays the courage to express what she is really trying to say. She was inconsistent in her opinion towards white people. She portrayed whites as cruel and evil at times, and at other times had her characters express gratitude towards them. Beloved was a good book, but not a good story. If you are one who reads for gratification, I would not suggest it solely because of lack of satisfaction and/or fulfillment the story leaves you feeling. If you read to expand your horizons on a cultural level, just remember, you'll never get the hours you'll waste on this book back.
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Summary: a boring book review
Review: 'Beloved' has been shunned by many for its graphic portrayals of the dark side of human nature, by those who think that these portrayals are unnecessary to the story. But without these scenes and images that portray all the horrors of slavery, the story is incomplete and not as powerful. If the story lacked these scenes and images, it would make the resurrection of Beloved less believable and not as creepy. It would also make it harder for the reader to understand why Sethe could have possibly wanted to kill her children to keep them from a life of slavery. Slavery is awful, but doesn't seem that bad until you read about the chained black slaves who, when faced with the decision of performing oral sex on white guards, chose a bullet in their brain instead. Or, when slave owners used females slaves as breeders. Still, with all of the horrible images that Morrison provides, infanticide is probably the most shocking, although other scenes make it less horrific. Many readers are turned off or insulted by the author's graphic, offensive, and obscene incidents.
Readers learn about Sethe's disturbingly graphic and tragic past. Sethe has had to let a stranger use her body in exchange for some letters on a headstone. She has had her own milk stolen from her. She has been beaten until her back has split open. She has been so scarred by the horror of slavery that she felt killing her own children would be better then letting them live in slavery. Not only Sethe has had to go through with these atrocities. Her mother has been hanged, and her fellow slaves beaten, raped, tortured, murdered and burned alive. Everyone around her has been affected, as black men, women, and children all suffer because of their skin color.
Readers are drawn in as Sethe's past comes back to haunt her, and as the pieces of the story click together. The story is constantly delving into her and other character's thoughts, feelings, and pasts, and then resurfacing in the character's present time, and although this may be a little confusing or overwhelming, Morrison is able to relate the character's experiences of the past with the character's actions and decisions of the present.
I don't recommend this book for the easily offended or immature reader. It contains graphic material. It is not an easy read!
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