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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: Acceptable. Mass Market: There is some spine cracking and the book is very worn but no pages are missing and otherwise the book is in acceptable condition. Seller Inventory # 31URM800CB3H_ns
Book Description Paperback. Condition: Fair. No Jacket. Readable copy. Pages may have considerable notes/highlighting. ~ ThriftBooks: Read More, Spend Less 0.45. Seller Inventory # G0099288052I5N00
Book Description Paperback. Condition: Fair. No Jacket. Readable copy. Pages may have considerable notes/highlighting. ~ ThriftBooks: Read More, Spend Less 0.45. Seller Inventory # G0099288052I5N00
Book Description Paperback. Condition: Fair. A readable copy of the book which may include some defects such as highlighting and notes. Cover and pages may be creased and show discolouration. Seller Inventory # GOR003995110
Book Description Befriedigend/Good: Durchschnittlich erhaltenes Buch bzw. Schutzumschlag mit Gebrauchsspuren, aber vollständigen Seiten. / Describes the average WORN book or dust jacket that has all the pages present. Seller Inventory # M00099288052-G
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Book Description Medium Trade Paperback. Condition: Very Good. Reprint. Medium Trade Paperback. 275 pages. *** PUBLISHING DETAILS: Hutchinson, UK, 1997. Reprint. *** CONDITION: This book is in very good condition. More specifically: Covers have no creasing. Edges of covers have moderate wear. Spine is uncreased. . Pages are reasonably tanned. *** ABOUT THIS BOOK: It is the mid-1800s. At Sweet Home in Kentucky, 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. *** Quantity Available: 1. Category: Fiction; 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die; ISBN: 0099288052. ISBN/EAN: 9780099288053. Inventory No: 24030373. Seller Inventory # 24030373
Book Description Paperback. Condition: Good. 275 pages. Cover worn It is the mid-1800s. At Sweet Home in K entucky, an era is ending as slavery comes under attack from the abolitionists. The words 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 wi ll return to claim retribution. Seller Inventory # 3192r
Book Description Softcover. Condition: Very Good. Reprint. Softcover. 275 pages. *** PUBLISHING DETAILS: Hutchinson, UK, 1997. Reprint. *** CONDITION: This book is in very good condition. More specifically: Covers have no creasing. Edges of covers have superficial wear. Spine is uncreased. . Pages are lightly tanned. *** ABOUT THIS BOOK: It is the mid-1800s. At Sweet Home in Kentucky, 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. *** Quantity Available: 1. Category: Fiction; 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die; ISBN: 0099288052. ISBN/EAN: 9780099288053. Inventory No: 22030049. Seller Inventory # 22030049
Book Description Couverture souple. Condition: Comme neuf. Seller Inventory # ABE-1649841547964