Beloved - Toni Morrison
March 2, 2021•130 words
★★★★½☆
The dreamlike quality of the writing and depth of endurance these characters have had to build puts much of this book at the edges of my grasp, but what I have absorbed feels like a gift. One moment stood out to me amid the sweet, pregnant dread that is Beloved's presence at 124 and Paul D's heartbreaking attempts to reckon with himself, and that was how Baby Suggs was surprised to find she felt different after crossing the line into a state where she was free. I won't do it the disservice of a summary but the borrowed feeling of a second-first breath from that passage alone was worth every moment of (very necessary) discomfort in the rest of this simmering narrative.