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Title: Sula by Toni Morrison ISBN: 0-452-28386-8 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: 05 April, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.02 (60 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Sula
Comment: Toni Morrison's second novel, "Sula", is a wonderful piece of artwork that spans many decades, revealing the growth of the African-American society and the sentiments felt by those who have observed it.
"Sula" is like a duel novel, where we are told the story of Nel Wright and Sula Peace. They are women separated by differing outlooks on life and then reunited when they feel middle age.
Nel is our flat character, the one who remains the same; she is the "sensible" one, where she stays in her hometown and does what every African-American woman is doing at the time, being subservient to the rest of society.
Sula, however, is our tragic figure, the one who goes out to receive an education, who betters herself and refuses to see the gates that whites and blacks have put up for her.
It is a moving and powerful story, where there are so many vivid moments that make you want to cringe, to vomit (e.g. Sula slicing her finger), but this only adds to the splendor and magic of this novel. Although this is definitely not an original idea, for Nella Larsen did it in her novel "Passing", Morrison is working with controversial subject matter, and it is amazing to see her succeed at it.
"Sula" is a mini-epic that is bound to move the reader at the power of friendship and the bonds that these women share, even through the trials and tribulations of mid-twentieth century life.
Rating: 5
Summary: Her Best
Comment: This is Toni Morrison's best book, and I've read all of them. It's also the best book I've ever read about female friendship. Thanks Ms. Morrison for a book I've savored all my life.
Rating: 4
Summary: First Morrison I have read -- middling grade
Comment: Sula has pluses and minuses. Let's start with some of the pluses: an interesting plot in an interesting setting. Some beautiful writing. The description of Sula's household growing up is colorful and engaging. Those are important things. I do have some other less flattering comments:
Morrison sometimes seems intentionally obscure to me, by heightening the difficulty for the reader, despite the fact that the plot events are often attention-grabbing. The central event of the book can almost be missed at first if one is not paying closeattention, for example. The exact source of Sula's antagonism towards her grandmother is also unclear. It strikes me at these times as very much a novel by the academic Morrison is.
SPOILER! I also found the group suicide which concludes the book's 1941 episode gratuitous, unnecessary and utterly unbelievable. I'm not sure why Morrison included this plot development -- what does it really add? -- but it's a serious plotting mistake. A mass suicide is too major an event to be included in passing -- either concentrate on it or don't include it.
It's worth mentioning that Sula, from 1973, is dated in its moral attitudes. Morrison documents a series of absolutely horrible events -- murders of children by their mothers, Sula's institutionalization of her grandmother, and lesser sins like adultery and fights -- with no reprimands. The only time she issues moral judgement is by placing scare quotes around "good" as in "the 'good women' ". The work reeks of an early-1970s radicals' moral permissiveness which strikes me as odd, reading it in 2003.
A more substantive aesthetic criticism is that the final scene, in 1965, just doesn't pack the punch it could have. A personal judgement.
So the novel has good and bad.
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Title: Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison ISBN: 0452260116 Publisher: Plume Pub. Date: September, 1987 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Paradise by Toni Morrison ISBN: 0452280397 Publisher: Plume Pub. Date: April, 1999 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: Beloved by Toni Morrison ISBN: 0452280621 Publisher: Plume Pub. Date: September, 1998 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: Jazz (Plume Contemporary Fiction) by Toni Morrison ISBN: 0452269652 Publisher: Plume Pub. Date: April, 1993 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: Tar Baby by Toni Morrison ISBN: 0452264790 Publisher: New American Library Pub. Date: September, 1987 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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