Beloved

This is one of the best books i read last years. It explores themes of slavery and how it affects its victims even after they gain freedom. Oh and the cover is gorgeous!

El libro es muchísimo más bonito de lo que esperaba: tiene el borde de las páginas en negro y las tapas debajo de la cubierta son perfectas (para quien ya haya leído el libro o a posteriori). Lo recomiendo encarecidamente. Además, llegó rapidísimo y muy bien empaquetado.

Good

J’ai reçu le livre dans un très bon état, je recommande ! L’histoire est tout à fait prenante et nous fait nous poser tout un tas de questions morales. Toni Morrison a une plume absolument superbe et mérite d’être plus connue internationalement que ce qu’elle est !

This novel was rated by the New York Times as the best American novel of the last 25 years and has been accorded the status of a classic great American novel. This amount of hype, Morrison's iconic status, and the difficulty of the book can cause a great amount of skepticism in the reader. One wants to hate the book and toss it aside. It took me quite a while to warm to the book, and I did almost toss it aside at points. It is not an easy read. Morrison could have structured her narrative in a more readable way, but she deliberately chose not to. The story of the runaway slave-mother's tragic loss of her daughter is too painful to be told in this fashion. So it's done episodically, with flashbacks, and with the device of the sudden appearance of a stray girl who is taken in as a new daughter with growing suspicions as to her being a reincarnation. There are very good reasons for Morrison to tell the tale in this fashion. The events of the slave era, after all, exist only in racial memory, and a 21st century reader can best approach the horrors of the times by peeling back the layers of memory. This is exactly how Morrison tells her story, and it does resonate. Also, it is apparent that Morrison is skilled in the oral traditions of a culture that didn't tell legends in a linear manner. So, the reader has to put aside his/her frustrations with the difficulty of this approach and appreciate the writer's need to tell the tale in this fashion. And it helps that the story becomes a lot clearer as you slog through the narrative. Morrison's language is quite remarkable. It is at times poetic. She can capture the character and look of a person in a few striking sentences. It's really some of the best writing I've read for some time. So, the book does live up to the hype. It's a classic work that has to be re-read and that probably has to be studied in a literature class to appreciate fully. I heard one critic say that this was the book he'd bring to a desert island. No way. It's not the kind of book one falls in love with. And for me, I connect better emotionally with Banks' and Oates' novels as well as O'Brien's "The Things They Carried." I'd probably rate those books as better than Morrison's in a contest to name the best American work of fiction over the past 25 years. Still, some of Morrison's characters, particularly "Paul D", are unforgettable and quite attractive. But in the end, I can't fall in love with this book any more than I could fall in love with "Ulysses." The book is a must-read for those wanting to be literate in recent American fiction.

Wow this is a must read… a masterpiece!