beloved

Everybody knew what she was called, but nobody anywhere knew her name. Disremembered and unaccounted for, she cannot be lost because no one is looking for her, and even if they were, how can they call her if they don't know her name? Although she has claim, she is not claimed. In the place where long grass opens, the girl who waited to be loved and cry shame erupts into her separate parts, to make it easy for the chewing laughter to swallow her all away.

- Toni Morrison

'Beloved'

I am not in the habit of reading novels more than once.

Not because i don't love them or feel i've gained everything i possibly could from the tale they have to tell but purely because i'm always looking for a new story to lose myself in. 

It's somewhat of an addiction.

So i don't return to the books i treasure, except for Expecting Someone Taller, i've read that a stupid number of times.

 It's a habit i decided to break however, with Toni Morrison's, Beloved.

I first read Beloved in my 5th year of high school. 

My sister suggested it to me while i was looking for a book to write my RPR on.

The RPR is a decently long essay, i can't remember the exact number of words required, that had to be written as part of passing your Higher English exam in Scotland. 

My year was the first to have the essay written under exam conditions.

That.

Sucked.

But i was writing about something i had fallen head over heels for, so it wasn't as hard as it could have been.

Beloved is essentially a ghost story but nowhere near as simple as that.

Not many ghosts take corporeal form again and feed off their mother's love to both punish and possess them.

I've been cautious for years about reading this book again.

I loved it so much when i was 17 that it would have hurt to realise it wasn't as wonderful as i thought.

But there's a reason Toni Morrison won both the Nobel Prize in literature and the Pulitzer Prize for Beloved itself.

This lady can write.

And to this day, Beloved remains a haunting, violent and beautiful book.

I am haunted by it.

In the very best way possible.

Ps. Ignore the film adaptation. It's doesn't deserve any connection to the book. Oprah Winfrey as Sethe? Come on now, that's just stupid.

Listening to: Grizzly Bear 'Sun In Your Eyes'