stapsreads

Loved this. All the things that Morrison does well - rich detail, fantastic evocation of time and place, horrors described in so matter-of-fact a way that one can't ignore them, and the importance, and joy and fraughtness, of friendship between women. Of shared but very different childhoods. The classic device of sending one girl away and leaving one at home - but it's rather more than that, because of what goes before, and because we never really learn about what Sula does at college and after, or about what Nel does at home in Medallion. A lot is left unsaid, a lot of what other authors might consider essential to the 'action', but one can take it as read.

I loved Sula herself, too - a free woman, escaping as far as is possible (which isn't very) from the expectations of her background, doing her own thing, and then coming back and doing her own thing again. I loved the way her entire existence is a rejection of the way women are expected to live (and I felt sorry for Nel, too, having to demonstrate the falsehood of that way of life). The resolution is perfect, and I only wish it could have come sooner.

http://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/6512128