Beloved

Finished it. Truly wonderful writing. It has to be one of the finest novels I've read and genuinely an important one too (and it's not often that that can be said with justification).

What can one say? Read it.

Here's what the much-maligned Wikipedia has to say on the novel.

These are some surprisingly perceptive Sparks Notes on the book.

And this is a link to Toni Morrison discussing her novel on the BBC Radio World Service Book Club.

I love this story from the New York Times:

SULLIVAN’S ISLAND, S.C. — Toni Morrison has said that her acclaimed novel “Beloved,” which features the ghost of a baby killed by her enslaved black mother, came out of the need for a literature to commemorate slaves and their history. “There is no suitable memorial, or plaque, or wreath or wall, or park or skyscraper lobby,” Ms. Morrison said in a 1989 magazine interview. “There’s no 300-foot tower, there’s no small bench by the road.”

This weekend, on Sullivan’s Island, off the South Carolina coast, Ms. Morrison, the Nobel laureate, and some 300 people held a memorial ceremony to dedicate her long-awaited “bench by the road.” (read the rest)

(Photograph by Anne McQuary for The New York Times)
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