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Beloved |
List Price: $12.95
Your Price: $10.36 |
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Product Info |
Reviews |
Rating: Summary: A Great Masterpiece Review: Tony Morrison's Beloved is the type of book that separates the readers of serious literature from the readers of escapist fiction. In this masterpiece Morrison has successfully created a magical world where every seemingly trivial detail serves to convey a larger, deeply meaningful theme. Unfortunately, some readers were unable to grasp Morrison's masterful work and went as far as to disparage her writing skills. Sadly, it is obvious that those readers either have some blatant prejudices against the author, or they simply have an aversion to literature that forces them to think. After all, I'm certain that countless "readers" would proclaim that the works of Grisham, Crichton, and Steel are better than those of Hemingway, Dickens, and Chaucer. I guess this kind of inadequate assessment of literature is what Alexander Pope had in mind when he wrote on his "An Essay on Criticism" that "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.
Rating: Summary: hauntingly, achingly beautiful Review: I do not believe that I have ever been as moved by a piece of writing as Beloved and as a English Literature student that is no mean feat. Those, and as I see there are a few of you, who believe that the horrors which African-American slaves were subjected to are 'insignificant' should firstly be ashamed by their ignorance and secondly stick to reading the second class 'literature' that they are so obvoiusly used to. Beloved touched my soul and its words, I believe will haunt me always. This is the first of Morrison's works that I have read but it will certainly not be the last.
Rating: Summary: High School English Students, Run For Your Lives! Review: While technically this book has a Pulitzer and Nobel prize, I did not find it to be one of the more entertaining works that I've read; but I suppose there is a difference between "good" and "entertaining". The lack of pleasure I derrived from this book may be partially due to the fact that my 11th grade Honors English class has spent the last 3 months reading and overanylizing every sentence of the book. While I probably would have enjoyed this semi gothic horror story under other circumstances, I did find the characters to be almost simple in their complexness. Never the less, it is a great book if your into the "ex-slave ghost come back from the dead to haunt her family" sort of thing. I guess that what I should be saying is that this book was just not my cup of tea. And HS english students beware, if your english class is anything like ours, all of the pleasure and joy that might have been derrived from reading this otherwise semi-entertaining book will be gone by the time you have finished.
Rating: Summary: overrated Review: i had to read this book for a required course in english composition during my first yr in college, and looking back now it seems that BELOVED was the worst possible choice for such a course. ms. morrison is a writer of considerable rhetorical resources, but she has not grown out of her infantile narcissism--to which, perhaps, all talented writers are susceptable--to care about her readers, or to question her own half-baked ideas. throughout her book, as soon as the characters begin to speak their own voices morrison herself intrudes and pours her own beliefs on us, as to prevent us from forgetting what she is for and against. This repression of the critical faculty damages her examination of the issues involved. it is a failure of imagination, a failure to understand, in postmodern terms, "the other". not surprisingly, for example, in dealing with racial issues, morrison is simply unable to see white men as concrete human beings; indeed, all white people in her novel remain a pure abstraction, a symbol for evil perhaps. if this is what morrison tries to do, as some of her facile commentators have suggested, it is an exceptionally stupid thing to do. i have been told, by people who read and know more fiction than i do, that some of morrison's earlier works are really fine. i can believe them, as she is evidently a talent. but her development worries me. it would be wrong to accuse her of being overly ambitious, to say her later works are failures in achieving greatness. good artists are required to be ambitious, to explore what they have not explored before. only morrison seems to be in the wrong direction.
Rating: Summary: Great book, but difficult to read. Review: This is one of the best books I've read, but like many of Morrison's books, you have to read it very thoroughly to catch all the elements that make it great. I would suggest it to people who enjoy deep reading.
Rating: Summary: An educated opinion Review: With a BA and an MA in English, I have read a few books in my time. Beloved is among the most haunting and substantive novels I have ever studied. I was lucky enough to read it in a graduate seminar, and it has remained in my consciousness ever since. It is a beautiful, devastatingly haunting story. Morrison once said, "People tell me, 'Your novel is on my bed stand.' I don't want books to be what people dip into before they go to sleep." Beloved is disquieting and that quality is its great strength. If you want light entertainment, read John Grisham.
Rating: Summary: Most powerful book of my lifetime Review: Haunting. Gripping. Magical realism ... by whatever name, the events at 124 will never let you go. This book is about what it means to love, and a full recognition that both apathy and hate are love's opposites. Richly textured, this is a moderately challenging read ... but worth it.
Rating: Summary: Definitely worth your time; a well developed novel Review: Toni Morrison, once again, manages to create a very powerful novel. Although Beloved is slow at parts, there are enough excelllent characteristics present to grasp your interest. The characters are all incredibly well-developed, and a reader can definitely sympathize with Sethe, and the dramatic decision that she makes. It is a good portrayal of the time period, a women's limitations, and an African American's limitations.
Rating: Summary: Hard to understand without help. Review: Beloved was the first of Toni Morrison's books I read at school, with help on interpreting the novel given by teachers. Beloved is truelly a learning experience, and a part of a history which needs to be written down and understood, but it is also a hard book to grasp if one hasn't had help understanding it.
Rating: Summary: A response to the Princeton, New Jersey review Review: I might get in trouble responding to this review, but... I have a problem when someone goes on and on bashing a masterpiece such as Beloved. Yes, the characters might show ignorace. But when you are a slave, of course you would be ignorant! You never went to school! Now look, people have a right to their opinion, but when they suggest that Toni Morrison should be taken away her Nobel prize just because one reader didn't like it, I have to say something. As for the book... the lines that haunt me are: Beloved, you are my sister, you are my daughter haunt me. For those lines, Ms. Morrison deserved all the prizes she got for the book. And if you don't agree with me, write your own book and see how easy it is.
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