OnionBob on 27/7/2006 at 18:45

---

As we seem to be making suggestions for next month, and as there seems to be some (somewhat bewildering) doubt as to the value of next month's selection when compared to what are seen to be somehow "weightier" or "more literary" choices (references to Nabakov and Simon Singh abound), I'd like to put in my suggestion.

This book comes with impeccable credentials - it was written by a Nobel prizewinner, and the book itself bagged the Pulitzer. And it shows. It's a devastating, at times unpalatable read, without ever being manipulative or cliché, and it's one of those books that everyone should experience. It's starting to turn up on some high school syllabuses now which is a bit nuts but good on 'em.

(http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0099760118/026-4534441-3399615?v=glance&n=266239) Beloved by Toni Morrison.


Amazon overview:

In the troubled years following the Civil War, the spirit of a murdered child haunts the Ohio home of a former slave. This angry, destructive ghost breaks mirrors, leaves its fingerprints in cake icing, and generally makes life difficult for Sethe and her family; nevertheless, the woman finds the haunting oddly comforting for the spirit is that of her own dead baby, never named, thought of only as Beloved.

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


***

So yeah, that's my suggestion for next time. :cool:

Paz on 27/7/2006 at 20:41

---

That's a bit subjective isn't it?

I'd have voted for Murakami except I was reading "Kafka on the Shore" at the time and fancied a change. Having never read any "noir", I thought "The Big Sleep" might be (no ... but yes!) interesting.

I could yet be proved wrong, but hey.

Stitch on 27/7/2006 at 22:02

---

Is this a trick question?

I agree, actually. One thing I've tried to make clear when people ask for rules clarification is that this is a community driven effort. ignatios and I may have set this up and I may be the one creating the threads, but beyond that this club belongs to absolutely anyone who wants to participate.

Additionally, if I do hate the book I still plan on keeping my contributions to the discussion as civil and constructive as possible. Explaining whay you think a book doesn't work is far more interesting than openly insulting the selection and the person who suggested it.

Stitch on 27/7/2006 at 22:24

---

I'm loving the open mocking of book suggestions, especially in regards to it all being directed at Onionbob.

Paz on 27/7/2006 at 23:26

---

Not at all, the correct answer is "yes"!

Anyway, for some reason I read your "this is the least interesting choice" as a PRIME DIRECTIVE rather than a personal feeling - probably 'cos you and ig kicked off this wonderful thing. Subsequently it came across as a bit "man, we're so disappointed in you awful plebs" and my class warfare meter went into overdrive AND OH MY HOW DARE YOU. Reading it again (along with the post afterwards) makes it clear I'd lost my mind.

So yes, back to flirting.