Helpful Score: 2
Toni Morrison is always a pleasure to read. I read this book for a gender and literature class, so you can be sure that it has a lot to say in that regard. The topics of sexuality, drugs, war, friendship, marriage and motherhood are also examined. This may be a short book, but there is a lot to think about. The characters here are pretty extreme and therefore not really relatable, but they serve their individual purposes well and make you alternately laugh and sigh in disgust. You'll never meet another character quite like Sula, I can promise you that!
Helpful Score: 2
Enchanting and powerful. Got the book for a class and read it in one weekend. Who can resist Toni Morrison?
Helpful Score: 1
This is about two best friends from the same background who make different choices.
Helpful Score: 1
Creepy, sick and twisted.
Helpful Score: 1
Sigh. Oh, where shall we begin?
SULA is the title character, yet she is not a focal character until you're halfway through the book; which speaks volumes. And when it does finally focus on her, it's only to reveal a vacuous and pointless character living in a vacuous and pointless town called Medallion, Ohio. In fact, it would've made more sense for the title to be MEDALLION or something, because it was more about the collective population of this mountain-based town than it was about SULA, dual meanings of the name notwithstanding.
For such a short book, the narrative managed to ramble and give irrelevant information about irrelevant people in Medallion, i.e., Shadrack the vet and his annual Suicide Day...just useless town folklore.
And then. The focal characters like Eva, Helene, Sula and Nel, proceed to engage in the most contrived, distasteful things imaginable. Fire. Drowning. Whoring. Betrayal. Constipated babies. (Gross! Seriously. Did we really need such distasteful visuals on that, not once, but TWICE?!) Yet there is no redemption for anyone.
And symbolism? If it's here...why should the reader even care? These people make you feel you need a shower...LOL
I cannot fathom that this pretentious narrative is actually taught in academic curriculums! This is the second Toni Morrison novel I've read, after THE BLUEST EYE, and I do not enjoy her writing style - it feels less like stellar prose and more like artificial and overindulgent writing.
I know many enjoy it, but I found nothing even remotely enjoyable here. This one gets an F from me. A major fail.
SULA is the title character, yet she is not a focal character until you're halfway through the book; which speaks volumes. And when it does finally focus on her, it's only to reveal a vacuous and pointless character living in a vacuous and pointless town called Medallion, Ohio. In fact, it would've made more sense for the title to be MEDALLION or something, because it was more about the collective population of this mountain-based town than it was about SULA, dual meanings of the name notwithstanding.
For such a short book, the narrative managed to ramble and give irrelevant information about irrelevant people in Medallion, i.e., Shadrack the vet and his annual Suicide Day...just useless town folklore.
And then. The focal characters like Eva, Helene, Sula and Nel, proceed to engage in the most contrived, distasteful things imaginable. Fire. Drowning. Whoring. Betrayal. Constipated babies. (Gross! Seriously. Did we really need such distasteful visuals on that, not once, but TWICE?!) Yet there is no redemption for anyone.
And symbolism? If it's here...why should the reader even care? These people make you feel you need a shower...LOL
I cannot fathom that this pretentious narrative is actually taught in academic curriculums! This is the second Toni Morrison novel I've read, after THE BLUEST EYE, and I do not enjoy her writing style - it feels less like stellar prose and more like artificial and overindulgent writing.
I know many enjoy it, but I found nothing even remotely enjoyable here. This one gets an F from me. A major fail.
Helpful Score: 1
"This novel traces the lives of 2 black heroines-- from their growing up together in a small Ohio town, through their sharply divergent paths of womanhood, to their ultimate confrontation and reconciliation."
Helpful Score: 1
I read this book for a literature class and enjoyed it, mainly because I had a teacher who really showed me the wonderful layers of this book. But please be aware, this is Toni Morrison so there will be no flowers and sunshine. However that being said, you'll be treated to fantastic writing and really interesting characters. My attention was more on the side characters than the two women throughout much of this book.
I thought this book was awful.
This rich and moving novel traces the lives of two black heroins from their close-knit childhood in a small Ohio town, through thier sharply divergent paths of womanhood, to thier ultimate confrontation and reconciliation. It's a great story.
This rich and moving novel races the lives of two black heroines from their close-knit childhood in a small Ohio town, through their sharply divergent paths of womanhood, to their ultimate confrontation and reconciliation.
Ne. Wright has chosen to stay in the place where she was born, to marry, raise a family, and become a pillar of the black community. Sula Peace has rejected the life Nel has embraced, escaping to college, and submerging herself in city life. When she returns to her roots, it is as a rebel and a wanton seductress. Eventually, both women must face the consequences of their choices. Together, they create an unforgettable portrait of what it means and costs to be a black woman in America.
Ne. Wright has chosen to stay in the place where she was born, to marry, raise a family, and become a pillar of the black community. Sula Peace has rejected the life Nel has embraced, escaping to college, and submerging herself in city life. When she returns to her roots, it is as a rebel and a wanton seductress. Eventually, both women must face the consequences of their choices. Together, they create an unforgettable portrait of what it means and costs to be a black woman in America.
A very interesting look at racism, growing up, surviving, and living life.
A great Morrison tale; it looks at female friendships and life choices in an interesting way that few other than Morrison could get away with. Morrison adds a hint of the supernatural to keep you thinking and wondering about the book long after you put it down.
Traces lives of 2 black heroines from childhood to womenhood. Both take different paths- one stay at home raise children, the other college and city life. These two faces their choices and discover what it means to be a black women in America.
An amazing book. The final line is so poignant... All Morrison's novels are wonderful. Don't miss this one.
Great for African American studies.
Overall, Sula was a very dark story. It seemed like the people in the town were so interconnected that they were affected by everyone else's decisions. It also seemed like there were cycles in the generations of townspeople that really couldn't be broken unless townspeople moved away and stayed away.
Often overlooked, this is one of my favorite Toni Morrison novels, and a much easier read than Beloved.
Not as "out there" as Morrison's later books, but with the same twists and surprises.
An important classic by an important author.
This rich and moving novel traces the lives of two black heroines-from their growing up together in a small Ohio town, through their sharply divergent paths of womanhood, to their ultimate confrontation and reconciliation. The one, Nel Wright, chooses to stay in the place of her birth, to marry, to raise a family, to become a pillar of the tightly knit black community. The other, Sula Peace, rejects all that Nel has accepted. She escapes to college, submerges herself in city life, and when she returns to her roots, it is as a rebel, a mocker, a wanton sexual seductress. Both must decide if they can afford to harbor the love they have for each other; and both combine to create an unforgettable rendering of what it means and costs to exist and survive as a black woman in America. From a smoke-free home.
A beautifully written book that centers around the friendship of two black girls and spans 40 years. It describes their changing relationship and the world they live in. A book that billiantly evokes not only a bond between two lives but the harsh, loveless, ultimately mad world in which that bond is destroyed.
Well worth reading.
Well worth reading.
I was actually very disappointed in this highly tauted book. I thought "Beloved" was wonderful, but found this one pretty dry and boring, sorry.
Incredibly original. Reads like poetry!
good book-toni morrison writes well
I was unusually moved by this book, indeed, was brought to tears at times... SULA comments on the things we all deal with when it comes to the people in our lives; it challenges misconceptions about female friendship and makes us think twice about holding onto anger.
Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, this National Bestseller was also an Oprah's book club selection!
I have never met a Toni Morrison book I didn't like.As the Los Angeles Free Press wrote "Should be read and passed around and reread by book lovers everwhere".
An Oprah's Book Club selection by a Nobel Prize winner.
At its centerâ"a friendship between two women, a friendship whose intensity first sustains, then injures. Sula and Nelâ"both black, both smart, both poor, raised in a small Ohio townâ"meet when they are twelve, wishbone thin and dreaming of princes.
Through their girlhood years they share everythingâ"perceptions, judgments, yearnings, secrets, even crimeâ"until Sula gets out, out of the Bottom, the hilltop neighborhood where beneath the sporting life of the men hanging around the place in headrags and soft felt hats there hides a fierce resentment at failed crops, lost jobs, thieving insurance men, bug-ridden flour...at the invisible line that cannot be overstepped.
Through their girlhood years they share everythingâ"perceptions, judgments, yearnings, secrets, even crimeâ"until Sula gets out, out of the Bottom, the hilltop neighborhood where beneath the sporting life of the men hanging around the place in headrags and soft felt hats there hides a fierce resentment at failed crops, lost jobs, thieving insurance men, bug-ridden flour...at the invisible line that cannot be overstepped.
From Amazon.com:
Book Description
Two girls who grow up to become women. Two friends who become something worse than enemies. In this brilliantly imagined novel, Toni Morrison tells the story of Nel Wright and Sula Peace, who meet as children in the small town of Medallion, Ohio. Their devotion is fierce enough to withstand bullies and the burden of a dreadful secret. It endures even after Nel has grown up to be a pillar of the black community and Sula has become a pariah. But their friendship ends in an unforgivable betrayalor does it end? Terrifying, comic, ribald and tragic, Sula is a work that overflows with life.
Book Description
Two girls who grow up to become women. Two friends who become something worse than enemies. In this brilliantly imagined novel, Toni Morrison tells the story of Nel Wright and Sula Peace, who meet as children in the small town of Medallion, Ohio. Their devotion is fierce enough to withstand bullies and the burden of a dreadful secret. It endures even after Nel has grown up to be a pillar of the black community and Sula has become a pariah. But their friendship ends in an unforgivable betrayalor does it end? Terrifying, comic, ribald and tragic, Sula is a work that overflows with life.
this is the hardcover version
This is a Oprah's book club book.
New condition. I accidentally bought two and never read this one. :-)
