By turns horrifying and hilarious, filled with sex and violence, a meandering story of friendship and betrayal spanning 50 years in a segregated, racist small Ohio town. Not the kind of thing I'd normally read, and I had in fact successfully avoided the author until this book. And now I understand why she won the Nobel Prize - the writing is on a par with Clemens, Kipling and Tolkien. Just excellent, a masterclass in literature in less than 200 pages. Read it and weep - literally. ( )

This book is fantastic; delightful to read. Definitely recommend. ( )

'Sula' is only the second novel by Toni Morrison that I've read, the other being the famed [b:Beloved|6149|Beloved|Toni Morrison|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1347984578l/6149._SY75_.jpg|736076]. 'Sula' is much shorter and read more like a novella to me. It centres upon a black community named Medallion in Ohio between 1919 and 1965. The narrative meanders around several households, while orbiting Sula and her best friend Nel. These two only children are inseparable until Nel gets married, whereupon their lives diverge. Nel remains in Medallion while Sula roams and returns. The depiction of their friendship is vivid and moving:

Although it was she alone who saw this magic, she did not wonder at it. She knew it was all due to Sula's return to the Bottom. It was like getting the use of an eye back, having a cataract removed. Her old friend had come home. Sula. Who made her laugh, who made her see old things with new eyes, in whose presence she felt clever, gentle, and a little raunchy. Sula, whose past she had lived through and with whom the present was a constant sharing of perceptions. Talking to Sula has always been a conversation with herself. Was there anyone else before whom she could never be foolish? In whose view inadequacy was mere idiosyncracy, a character trait rather than a deficiency? Anyone who left behind that aura of fun and complicity? Sula never competed; she simply helped others define themselves. Other people seemed to turn their volume on and up when Sula was in the room.

Running through the narrative are the cruelties and constraints forced on people of colour in America in the early 20th century. Morrison explores the psychological consequences of prejudice, segregation, and poverty with great insight and sensitivity. I found the whole novel compelling and evocative enough to read straight through in a single sitting. ( )

A little masterpiece of a novel, which for many reasons, none of which are a reflection on the work, I didn't enjoy reading, even though I could see Morrison's genius, insight and brilliance all through it. I even marked a couple passages where the prose or an observation made a particular impact on me. Overall, however, I was just not moved by the lives of Sula, Nel, their families and acquaintances. I don't feel that Morrison wanted to elicit sympathy for them, and that may be where she lost me. ( )

Like most people who've earned a degree in literature in the United States since 1990, I've read Toni Morrison's "Beloved" about three times. I really like parts of that one -- mostly the bit where the characters retell their past experiences or when the author goes head-to-head with William Faulkner. Much of the rest of that book seems a bit stagy to me, though, a bit stiff.

So Sula surprised me a little. It's a much looser affair than "Beloved", and while I can't call it a happy book, necessarily, it's got more room for eccentricity and its own sort of humor. Its lens is also a bit wider than that other novel's, too. It takes place over about seventy years -- one human lifespan -- and Morrison takes as her subject the entire black community living in the town of Medallion, Ohio, not just Nell and Sula, the two women at the novel's center. So we hear about war veterans that didn't come back quite right and pool halls and candy stores and small-town gossip even while Morrison works out some of the themes that she'd express more fully in "Beloved." We hear a lot about the characters' houses and their bodies and the all-consuming sense of emptiness some of them contend with. I don't know if I can say that "Sula" is as successful or as ambitious as "Beloved" is: the latter is due for a re-read. But for a novel that clocks at just under two hundred pages, it feels marvelously rich and complete, and features many examples of real high-quality prose, the stuff that separates the pretenders from the contenders, when all is done. This is an astonishingly polished and impressive performance, especially considering it was just Morrison's second novel. Recommended, especially if you couldn't understand why "Beloved" got such great reviews. ( )