Race and the American Novel Project: Beloved Reader Response

The reviews of “Beloved” on Goodreads.com were interesting. People generally gave either all five stars or only one. Obviously this reaction is just about as mixed as you can get. A few notable quotes from the people who gave one star are; “This is probably my least favorite book I’ve ever read” (User: Harpal), “I found it a borderline insulting waste of my time” (Mark Stone), and “This is like the deliberately hideous painting that is called ‘art’ by intellectuals” (User: Trillion). Many of them said they felt it was pretentious and over-analyzed even though there was no real substance. On the other end of the spectrum, the people who gave it five stars generally just quoted the book and then discussed those quotes. One memorable quote from one of the people, however, was “Beloved is the Great American Horror Novel. Sorry Stephen King: evil clowns and alcoholic would-be writers are pretty creepy, but they just got nothing on the terrifying specter of American slavery!” (User: Jessica).

The reader reviews on Barnes and Noble’s website were much more mixed. There were many two, three, and four star reviews. One of the one star reviews, amusingly titled “BeHated” said, “Toni Morrison ought to be ashamed of herself for writing such weirdness” (Anonymous). Thinking that the book was weird is certainly a theme among the negative reviews. A four star review said, “Morrison wrote this novel with spellbounding emotion that can hadrdly [sic] be compared to any work of fiction I have ever read” (Anonymous). So again, mixed reviews.

Amazon had the most positive reviews. It had a lot of five stars and not as many one stars. That may just be that at the time I read the reviews a large amount of five stars came in. An interesting thing about Amazon is that it has a verified purchase option so you can see who has most likely actually read it. I do not know why someone would leave a review for a book they had not read but it could happen and influence the reviews.

I tended to agree with the positive reviews more than the negative. It seemed that at some points the negative reviews were written by people who did not really understand symbolism. Many were made uncomfortable by the disjointed writing style and unusual characters. However, these aspects are exactly what makes this book so unique in my opinion. It deals with dark topics and leaves you with more questions than answer. I think this is what a serious classic novel ought to do. If I were to write a review on one of these sites, I would give “Beloved” five stars.