Author: Toni Morrison
Genre: Fiction; Classics; Magical Realism; African American Culture
Synopsis: (from Goodreads) Sethe was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. She has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. Her new home is haunted by the ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved.
Review: I admire Toni Morrison's writing as much as I admire any writing out there. She is able to create complex characters with ease... characters you come to care deeply about. Sethe is as complex as they come, and you understand the decisions she makes, even if you could never understand or fathom the horrors she's lived through. There's a lot to this story -- hauntings, magical realism, love, tragedy, horror. The plot moves swiftly in three sections of a narrative, each more intense than the last. The intensity of the story, the intensity of the trauma, that's what makes the story so beautiful and difficult to read.
Reading Level: This text is both mature and complex, so I'd recommend it to my stronger, more mature readers. The mature scenes are about the atrocities of slavery and brutality that leaves behind, emotionally, physically, and mentally.