Vivid and affecting, Beloved left me with a clench in my throat and the feeling that I'd just read something real. The depiction of the violence being done to black people, slaves and otherwise, in mid-to-late-19th century America caught at me and wrenched - the first time for as long as I can remember that a novel has made me feel angry and upset. I suppose that it's a tribute to Morrison's craft and technical ability that I responded so strongly to a story which is, at least on the surface, far removed from my own experience - although the period setting and dialogue could easily have acted as a distancing factor, the prose in which the novel's written is so transparent, and its characters and situations ring so true, that I was immersed in the book's universe rather than ever being pulled up short by a sense of dislocation or unfamiliarity.
I'm finding it hard to look at this book critically so soon after having finished it, so just a few thoughts:
- It achieves a good balance between the individual story and the more universal aspects...I mean that the way in which it addresses the big picture never distracts from the details of the representation of the particular narrative of Sethe, Denver, Beloved, Halle, Paul D and the rest - somehow, the broader 'themes' are necessarily present and implicit in the way that the story is told.
- Relatedly, the novel strikes me as deeply moral without being moralising.
- White people are far from demonised - see Amy, the Garners, the Bodwins...
- There's cruelty and horror, but nearly all of it takes place 'off stage', as it were, in the rememberings of various characters.
- Also, I'm not even sure that Beloved is primarily concerned with the 'African-American experience', though that's obviously central...mind you, I'm not sure what else could be said to be its 'primary' concern - the continuing effect of history in the present, perhaps, or maybe just the ties that bind more generally.
- Again, the theme of hauntedness is made literal.
- The imagery can be a little obvious - Sethe's immense urination as a second breaking of waters when Beloved returns, the naturalistic spaces which Denver and Baby Suggs make their own, the three shadows holding hands (although that last functions quite interestingly in the end) - but, perhaps because of the clarity of Morrison's vision, it works effectively nonetheless.
- The technique of anticipating subsequent elaborations on the characters' historical narratives leaves me in two minds; it's obviously deliberate, but I can't quite work out what purpose it serves...perhaps that 'past operating in the present' idea again.
A pretty substantial blow to my theory that I increasingly only enjoy novels/films with which I can personally identify!
