Selections from One-Star Amazon Reviews of Toni Morrison’s Beloved

[Editorial note: The following citations come from one-star Amazon reviews of Toni Morrison’s complex, abject, disturbing, wonderful novel Beloved.

I’ve preserved the reviewers’ own styles of punctuation and spelling. More one-star Amazon reviews.]


Sex

Too Strange

bodily fluids

rather depressing

unlikable characters

on my book club list

Another slavery book

grotesque & obscene gestures

repulsive scenes of voyeurism

Critics fall all over themselves

perverted-ghost-baby-women

literature is one of my passions,

Slavery, filicide and a poltergeist

Slavery was awful for blacks and whites

I can’t believe this crap is considered literature

must have won the Pullizter for political reasons

some litteray qualities, which the litteraty people dig

granted, no one can possibly fathom the horrors of slavery

relavent in today’s world only as a “politically correct” theme

graphic innuendo that I found offensive, although the language was clean

I got busted for buying as intially it was in the syllabus and later removed

As a graduate student of the School of Education in University of Connecticut,

The setting is some black guys who are slaves in the middle of the 19th. century

Black history is so important but I was looking for more of a mental health narrative

I completely understand the need to ‘remember’ the horrors that happened during the American slave trade

To Kill A Mockingbird was an excellent book about racism, and Amy Tan writes a lot of great books

reviewed as part of a book club that I attend and not one person liked it

People do things with farm animals that they shouldn’t

I was pleased that nobody liked the book

incomprehensible style

the book is super think

too much supernatural

extremely triggering

As a mother myself,

rape and bestiality

definitely R-rated

I must be stupid

jumped around

impenetrable

fright a minute

Very well written

food on the cover

jumped around

I’m troubled right now

finer feelings are diminished

If racism is going to end, it needs to go both ways

down right salacious in content & depressing as well

I am currently an undergraduate at Princeton University

a great story if it were only written in the normal manner

There is also the added element of a ghost, so what she’s up to, I don’t know

that stinky cheese you find after like a year, and its rock hard…. just like me ;)

I read books because I want to read a story with gripping characters, not so an author can try to be clever and symbolic

Every book she writes involves crude, explicit sexuality that is completely unnecessary, and is focused on black people.

We can never understand how horrible slavery is, I understand. Reading 324 pages about people getting tortured and subsequent consequences sincerely will not help you be any happier, gain any form of important insight on life, or become a better person

because it’s about slavery and nobody is allowed to knock books about slavery, it gets all these plaudits

I read many classics and modern classics as opposed to popular novels

quite possibly the worst book that I have ever read

I consider myself fairly intelligent

on my grandaughter’s reading list

Worst book I have ever read

violent and depressing

overboard & weird!

dark and rambled

gush and gaa-gaa

struts and preens

Grotesque content

literary snobbism

Uhhhh…. Huh??

shock value

Hated it

an slog

jibber jabber

an “okay” writer

I’m an avid reader

I’ve read a lot of books

eat dirt & watch the grass grow

I can deal with thick slang but

the hardships of colored people

I don’t care if she was black or white

Having seen part of the movie on TV,

I have to say not a lot of things shock me

overdone, overused, overwritten, overhyped

constant and excructiatingly graphic descriptions of brutality and suffering

I think this book was awful and did not deserve a prize of any kind. I wrote the author years ago and told her so.

We have read about the disgusting things slaves suffered at the hands of their ‘masters’ it was horrible but why do we need another book?

graphic sexual descriptions that are so overwhelmingly uncalled for?

There are so many other things to write about. why pain and anger?

You name it, this book does it wrong

confusing, disgusting, disturbing

cuss words every few sentences

horse (expletive deleted)

Why so much disgust

violence

insanity

race

mud

sex

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