Beloved

Easily she stepped into the told story that lay before her. Toni Morrison's reading of Beloved is a stirring experience. She transports you to the dooryard, to Sweet Home plantation, to 124 Bluestone Road as she weaves in and out of the story of Sethe, a runaway slave, and her daughters. Morrison is there with you, speaking slowly, making each image live in your imagination. She speaks of colors--a pink tongue, a blue handkerchief, yellow flowers--each hue becomes so vivid against a background of browns, blacks and gray. She tells of unimaginable hardship and tragedy, and makes the power of the words get you through it. Morrison handles the dialogue among characters with impressive skill, not for characterization, but for the pacing and rhythm that is so essential to her literature. Banter is, at times, very contemporary, while other conversations have a highly stylized and mystical tone. Anyone who has read Beloved in the written form will be stunned by how much more Morrison has to share in the oral form. Don't miss this treasured author and storyteller at her magnificent work. R.F.W. Winner of AUDIOFILE Earphones Award (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine

September 1, 1988
``Mixed with the lyric beauty of the writing, the fury in Morrison's . . . book is almost palpable,'' asserted PW of this Pulitzer Prize-winning ``haunting chronicle of slavery and its aftermath'' set in rural Ohio in the wake of the Civil War. The ``brilliantly conceived story . . . should not be missed.''