I am on my fourth read of this AWESOME, BRILLIANT book

I am on my FOURTH, yes FOURTH read of this awesome, brilliant work of art. I first read Beloved in my mid-twenties, and frankly found it to be confusing, murky and nearly impossible to finish.

Around thirty, I tried again, realizing that Morrison's Pulitzer had to have meant there was just something I didn't get the first time. I enjoyed Beloved a bit more on the second go round, probably because I did myself a favor by reading Cliff's notes along the way (I needed major help with the historical references and the symbolism.) I still did not see the awesome allegory Morrison had created in Sethe - her representation of all that slavery left living in us - and how the "post-trauma" of its legacy returns (ghostlike) to haunt our homes.

As a thirty-something aspiring writer, I began to investigate literary style, symbol, method and metaphor, and after having studied for a few years, I attempted Beloved yet again. It was during that third read that I fell in love with Morrison's AWESOME prose. Beloved is more than a ghost story - it is 200+ pages of poetic dialogue and unbelievably penetrating prose.

"...they killed the flirt whom folks called Life for leading them on. Making them think the next sunrise would be worth it; that another stroke of time would do it at last..."

I am on my fourth read now, highlighting (yes with a fluorescent highlighter) each stunning example I am able to detect of Morrison's genius. (Needless to say, there is hardly a page I've read that doesn't have lines of yellow markings.)

"So you protected yourself and you loved small. Picked the tiniest stars out of the sky to own... anything bigger wouldn't do. A woman, a child, a brother - a big love like that would split you wide open in Alfred, Georgia... to get to a place where you could love anything you chose - not to need permission... well now, that was freedom"

With her creation of the Sweet Home "men" and her descriptions of Sethe and Baby Sugg's "strategies" to survive as women and mothers in a life they couldn't own, (even in their "freedom") Toni Morrison created in my being a KNOWLEDGE, (as opposed to a wonder) an INKLING of the physical, emotional and psychological horrors enslaved Africans and their progeny faced.

To those who gave this book one or two stars, I hope you will try Beloved again and give yourself the gift of one of the best-crafted novels of the twentieth century.