Beloved

By: Toni Morrison

Narrated by: Toni Morrison

Length: 12 hrs and 3 mins

Publisher's summary

PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A spellbinding novel that transforms history into a story as powerful as Exodus and as intimate as a lullaby. With a new afterword by the author.

This "brutally powerful, mesmerizing story” (People) is an unflinchingly look into the abyss of slavery, from the acclaimed Nobel Prize winner.

Sethe was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. Sethe has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. And Sethe’s new home is haunted by the ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved.

“A masterwork.... Wonderful.... I can’t imagine American literature without it.” —John Leonard, Los Angeles Times

©1987 Toni Morrison (P)1998 Random House, Inc.

Critic reviews

“A masterwork. . . . Wonderful. . . . I can’t imagine American literature without it.” —John Leonard, Los Angeles Times

“A triumph.” —Margaret Atwood, The New York Times Book Review

“Toni Morrison’s finest work. . . . [It] sets her apart [and] displays her prodigious talent.” —Chicago Sun-Times

What a masterpiece

Many more erudite than I have reviewed Beloved but let me say that this book narrated by Ms Morrison carried me away to another time and place and filled with both the character’s pride, hurt, sadness, and happiness.

Beguiling Beloved

If you are like I was over the years and struggled to read and understand Toni Morrison's gorgeous work of art that is Beloved, you must listen to the author read it to you herself. You will wonder what ever kept you from grasping the depth and the beauty of this mystic work of lyric poetry. Set in the post civil war era, Morrison conjures the freed slave experience in a way you have never before experienced. The setting is not the place where the story unfolds so dangerously, that place is deeper, hidden somewhere in the heart and the soul. Let Toni Morrison take you there, if you dare.

amazing!

tears, pain, faith. to believe in what your eyes see and your heart feels. amazing!

Beloved

The book explains the movie a lot more in depth. It was amazing and I love Toni Morrison’s voice may she Rest In Peace happy she blessed up with her work

Pulls You Inside-Out

Toni Morrison --both as author and with her solemn, melodious voice--pulls you into the world of slavery and of the human heart -- with its joys, terrors and imaginative possibilities.

You will want to follow her on this journey, as I did, if you want to "live" something uniquely imagined, that includes deep pains and terrors, is part of the history of all Americans, and will pull you inside-out until your guts are exposed to the air.

"Not for everyone"? Well it's not a Great Escape, or what is commonly called "beach reading". But if you want the heavy stuff-- through the eyes and pen of an African American who is one of the most brilliant writers of our time, you could do worse tha trusting her own voice to lead you --through infernos and purgatories undreamed of by Dante.

And then, if you choose, you can go on to her novel "Paradise".

Those who complain about Morrison’s narration are missing it...

I had the pleasure of attending a live reading from Beloved when the novel first came out. Morrison spoke at San Jose State University where she read from her then-newest novel. Her voice, pitch, rhythm, pauses, inflections, and soul were pitch perfect in every regard. I was captivated. In response, I bought the book, Beloved, and couldn’t get through it. Despite my BA and MA in literature, I couldn’t get through it. This saddened and frustrated me because I was held spellbound by Morrison’s reading.

Now, 31 years later, I listened to Beloved on audible - read by Morrison. It all came back and I found I loved this book both (even as it simultaneously devastated me) for the amazing literary achievement as much as for Morrison’s beautiful reading of it.

True...there are plenty of authors who should not be reading their own works. Toni Morrison is not one of them. She is so good, in fact, even though I have read all of her other works in hard copy, I will be purchasing those read by her on Audible and allowing myself the utter luxury of being carried away by a beautiful story read by an amazing narrator.

A master of detail and poetry

There’s really no words to fully speak on Toni Morrison’s writing or the way she artfully tells a story. It takes all of you- the parts that think you’ve got it, the part that has no idea, and the part that is fully romanced. Wow!!! Just love! True artist!

A Tough Sit, But Worth It

“Beloved” is considered by many to be the greatest novel in English of the past 40 years, and with good reason. With echoes of Faulkner, Morrison paints the post-Civil War south as a place of moral and spiritual decay, a graveyard haunted by the spirits of those who did not survive and those who did. In those times, she says, the true horror was in the souls of the victims being made to reflect the barbarity of their tormentors - in willing to live even in the deformity of this world, survivors risked intolerable moral compromise and spiritual death. In such a time, there were legends that Morrison says were best forgotten but whose presence continues to haunt and curse this land. In our own era of school shootings, overdoses, incarceration, and other forms of mass death, it’s not hard to feel a chill in reading (listening to) Morrison’s words. Are we any different now, she seems to be asking? Or are we still sacrificing our children to save what we think is the best of ourselves? What ghosts will come back from this time to haunt us in the future? This is a difficult book but one that hasn’t lost its impact since it was written and, unless we can truly change and replace this country with a better one, may never will.

The most moving and evocative book about enslavement written.

Fascinating, painful and filled with the most dangerous thing of all, LOVE. The meaning of family and ties to what can become family examined carefully, brutally and tenderly.

Truly amazing

Truly amazing Truly amazing Truly amazing Truly amazing Truly amazing Truly amazing Truly amazing Truly amazing Truly amazing. The ways Toni Morrison reads it is amazing. I just finished it & I am bereft in the best way.