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A dead child, a runaway slave, a terrible secret--these are the central concerns of Toni Morrison's Pulitzer Prize-winning Beloved. Morrison, a Nobel laureate, has written many fine novels, including Song of Solomon, The Bluest Eye, and Paradise--but Beloved is arguably her best. To modern readers, antebellum slavery is a subject so familiar that it is almost impossible to render its horrors in a way that seems neither clichéd nor melodramatic. Rapes, beatings, murders, and mutilations are recounted here, but they belong to characters so precisely drawn that the tragedy remains individual, terrifying to us because it is terrifying to the sufferer. And Morrison is master of the telling detail: in the bit, for example, a punishing piece of headgear used to discipline recalcitrant slaves, she manages to encapsulate all of slavery's many cruelties into one apt symbol--a device that deprives its wearer of speech. "Days after it was taken out, goose fat was rubbed on the corners of the mouth but nothing to soothe the tongue or take the wildness out of the eye." Most importantly, the language here, while often lyrical, is never overheated. Even as she recalls the cruelties visited upon her while a slave, Sethe is evocative without being overemotional: "Add my husband to it, watching, above me in the loft--hiding close by--the one place he thought no one would look for him, looking down on what I couldn't look at at all. And not stopping them--looking and letting it happen.... And if he was that broken then, then he is also and certainly dead now." Even the supernatural is treated as an ordinary fact of life: "Not a house in the country ain't packed to its rafters with some dead Negro's grief. We lucky this ghost is a baby," comments Sethe's mother-in-law.
Beloved is a dense, complex novel that yields up its secrets one by one. As Morrison takes us deeper into Sethe's history and her memories, the horrifying circumstances of her baby's death start to make terrible sense. And as past meets present in the shape of a mysterious young woman about the same age as Sethe's daughter would have been, the narrative builds inexorably to its powerful, painful conclusion. Beloved may well be the defining novel of slavery in America, the one that all others will be measured by. --Alix Wilber
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Book Description Condition: New. pp. 352. Seller Inventory # 7678485
Book Description Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. It is the mid-1800s. At Sweet Home in Kentuckhy, an era is ending as slavery comes under attack from the abolitionists. The worlds of Halle and Paul D. are to be destroyed in a cataclysm of torment and agony. The world of Sethe, however, is to turn from one of love to one of violence and death - the death of Sethe's baby daughter Beloved, whose name is the single word on the tombstone, who died at her mother's hands, and who will return to claim retribution.**One of the BBC's 100 Novels That Shaped Our World** The world of Sethe, however, is to turn from one of love to one of violence and death - the death of Sethe's baby daughter Beloved, whose name is the single word on the tombstone, who died at her mother's hands, and who will return to claim retribution.**One of the BBCs 100 Novels That Shaped Our World** Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability. Seller Inventory # 9780099273936
Book Description paperback. Condition: New. Language: ENG. Seller Inventory # 9780099273936
Book Description Soft Cover. Condition: new. Seller Inventory # 9780099273936
Book Description Paperback. Condition: New. BRAND NEW ** SUPER FAST SHIPPING FROM UK WAREHOUSE ** 30 DAY MONEY BACK GUARANTEE. Seller Inventory # 9780099273936-GDR
Book Description Condition: New. In eng. Seller Inventory # ria9780099273936_new
Book Description Paperback. Condition: Brand New. 352 pages. 7.76x5.12x0.87 inches. In Stock. Seller Inventory # __0099273934
Book Description Paperback / softback. Condition: New. New copy - Usually dispatched within 4 working days. The world of Sethe, however, is to turn from one of love to one of violence and death - the death of Sethe's baby daughter Beloved, whose name is the single word on the tombstone, who died at her mother's hands, and who will return to claim retribution. Seller Inventory # B9780099273936
Book Description Condition: New. A story set in the mid-19th century, when moves to abolish slavery are at their height, and one man's world of love turns to violence when his daughter dies at the hands of her mother. From the author of EN-GENDERING and NOBEL SPEECH. Num Pages: 352 pages. BIC Classification: FA. Category: (G) General (US: Trade). Dimension: 199 x 129 x 22. Weight in Grams: 248. 1999. Paperback. . . . . Seller Inventory # 9780099273936
Book Description Condition: New. A story set in the mid-19th century, when moves to abolish slavery are at their height, and one man's world of love turns to violence when his daughter dies at the hands of her mother. From the author of EN-GENDERING and NOBEL SPEECH. Num Pages: 352 pages. BIC Classification: FA. Category: (G) General (US: Trade). Dimension: 199 x 129 x 22. Weight in Grams: 248. 1999. Paperback. . . . . Books ship from the US and Ireland. Seller Inventory # 9780099273936