Beloved

Synopsis: Terrible, unspeakable things happened to Sethe at Sweet Home, the farm where she lived as a slave for so many years until she escaped to Ohio. Her new life is full of hope but eighteen years later she is still not free. Sethe's new home is not only haunted by the memories of her past but also by the ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved.

Review: This isn't an easy read, firstly the style is somewhat random and poetic and it takes some getting used to, and secondly the content is at times extremely harrowing but it's worth persevering with because the quality of the writing is outstanding and the story completely gripping .. it's one of those stories where part of you doesn't want to read on for fear of what you might learn but the other part of you is compelled to continue, and indeed it's a book best read continuously because there is a danger of losing your way if you just dip in and out.

Who knows what we'd be capable of if we felt that our backs were against the wall? Sethe will do anything to protect her family from suffering the same fate as she had. She makes up her mind to kill herself, and her family, rather than let them endure the inhumanity of slavery, she see's it as an act of love, but she's thwarted in her attempt and they are all .. except for a nameless baby .. saved. The baby's gravestone has only one word written on it ... Beloved ... but she is definitely not resting in peace. When we first join the book Beloved's spirit is wreaking havoc in the household but when she is banished from home by the intervention of Paul D, an old friend of Sethe's, she finds another way back .. this time as a fully grown girl (who is unrecognised by Sethe and her daughter Denver .. who are now the only two still living at home.) She calls herself Beloved (and still they fail to recognise her .. consciously at least) and she sets about, in an increasingly disturbing way, trying to regain all that was lost to her, greedily insisting that they lavish her with their time and attention .. almost like an aphid feeding off a rose .. until Sethe in particular, begins to resemble a mere shadow of her former self. The timescales are all over the place, dipping in and out of the present and the past, and showing us terrible snapshots of what befell Sethe, her family and her friends and what led her to act in the way she did.

The content is just completely horrifying, most of us have read stories and accounts of the suffering endured by black people during slavery but this is probably the most vivid account I've ever read, it's painful at times to read it. The writing really is superb and the book thoroughly deserves it's high reputation, all of the characters live on the page and the supernatural element that weaves through the story makes it all the more compelling. It was difficult, but I can't fault it.