Realized that I’ve reached page fifty and haven’t written anything about this Toni Morrison novel yet. It is because I was into the story, the writing, the people so deeply that I didn’t want to stop without finding out more.
The characters: Sethe, the female protagonist, obviously has had a hard life, losing all but one of her four children, has escaped slavery and sorrow and is happy enough "getting by"; Dakota, her daughter, a child of transition, her mother being pregnant with her when she ran away to start a new life, is lonely and isolated from others, seeking companionship in secrets; Paul D, one of the men from back home who has returned to move in with Sethe and shares her understanding of the way things were; Baby Suggs, Sethe’s mother-in-law, now dead, but still strong enough in character to affect the others; and of course, Beloved, Sethe’s dead baby girl who haunts their home.
I love the way Morrison starts the novel out with Beloved, making her real before we have any chance to question her, and so we accept Paul D’s first meeting with her:
Paul D tied his shoes together, hung them over his shoulder and followed her through the door straight into a pool of red and undulating light that locked him where he stood.
"You got company?" he whispered, frowning.
"Off and on," said Sethe.
"Good God." He backed out the door onto the porch. "What kind of evil you got in here?" (p. 8)
Morrison doesn’t fool around, she’s told us that this spirit is "in a house palsied by the baby’s fury at having its throat cut,…" By the way, even while we’re hit by a slew of names, they appear to be a bit off-kilter to me: Sethe comes to mind as a masculine name rather than for this this woman; Denver is her daughter’s name–odd I would think for Southerners; Paul D reminds me of "my brother Darryl and my other brother Darryl"; Baby Suggs for the old grandmother. But the bestest of all: Here Boy, the dog.
There’s so much going on, that’s happened before, that comes back to haunt as intensely as the ghost of Beloved itself.
Next necessary review: the writing, oh!
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology