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If you want to know which type of books did Toni Morrison write then the answer is she started with fiction books, then went to write/co-write non-fiction books as well.
But she didn’t limit herself to that as she wrote children books, and plays too.
Best selling book of Toni Morrison
Now that you have gone through the entire list of Toni Morrison books, it’s time to talk about the best selling book of Toni Morrison - Beloved published in 1997.
Beloved
Toni Morrison drew the inspiration for Beloved from the life of Margaret Garner who already killed her youngest daughter and was trying to kill her other children for preventing them from being returned to slavery, when the US marshalls broke into her house.
Beloved is a standalone novel by Toni Morrison and happens to be the most famous work of Toni Morrison.
The novel presents you a devastatingly haunting story of one of the most haunting topics of all time - American Slavery.
The way Toni Morrison presented all the characters in the novel especially the mother Sethe is truly heart-touching.
You must read this gem by Toni Morrison at least once in your life time if you’re a reader.
Beloved brought Morrison ‘Pulitzer Prize for Fiction’ one year after its publication.
The novel also became the finalist for the National Book Award of 1987.
The New York Times termed it as the best work of fiction between 1981 and 2006 and it was also made into a 1998 movie of the same name starring Oprah Winfrey.
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Beloved plot
Beloved begins in Cincinnati Ohio in 1873 where Sethe, a formerly enslaved woman lives with her daughter Denver.
The place where they live is haunted by a spirit who Sethe believes is the ghost of her eldest daughter.
Sethe has two boys too who ran away by the age of 13. The reason of them running away from home that Sethe believes is they were scared of the spirit.
The novel begins to speed up when Paul D, a man who worked at the same plantation where Sethe worked as a slave comes to their life.
Paul D receives disgust from Denver when he pushes the spirit out of their house because to Denver that spirit was the only friend.
However, Paul D convinces Sethe and Denver to go out of the house and attend a carnival.
When they return home, they find a young woman sitting in the front who calls herself ‘Beloved’.
Paul D warns Sethe against her but she decides to take her in and Denver also thinks that she got her older sister back.
Paul D gets worried at his diminishing importance in the house.
One night, Beloved asks for sex from Paul D. As they have it, Paul D’s mind brings back horrific memories from the past including sexual violence inflicted upon him and other men.
Paul D instead of telling about it to Sethe says to her that he wants her pregnant. Sethe is scared to have a baby.
When Paul D tells his friends about starting a new family they get scared, one of them warns him against Sethe telling him the reason due to which she has been cut off from the community.
When Paul D confronts Sethe, she reveals that after escaping slavery and joining her children at 124, four horsemen came to bring her and her children back to the life of slavery.
She didn’t want to go to Sweet Home run by its manager Schoolteacher so she fled to a woodshed where she decided to kill her children to “put her babies where they would be safe”.
But she only managed to kill her eldest daughter.
Paul D leaves after knowing this but Sethe is stubborn that she did the right thing.
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Sethe now believes that Beloved is her eldest daughter. She didn’t have enough money so she could only manage to engrave ‘BELOVED’ on her daughter’s tombstone.
She looks forward to a new life with the perfect family in which expects her husband and 2 sons to return.
She starts spending all her money on Beloved to please her and soon loses her job.
Beloved grows rude and more demanding.
While Sethe barely eats, Beloved grows bigger and biggers and takes the form of a pregnant woman.
Denver reveals that her brothers ran away because of the fear of Sethe, having known that she killed her two year-old daughter. Denver never understood why Sethe killed her daughter.
Denver asks the local black community for help from whom they were cut off due to the reason of a mother killing her two year old daughter.
Local women thus come to exorcise Beloved and also their white landlord comes to offer a job to Denver who had earlier asked for it.
Imagining that the landlord is the SchoolTeacher who came to take her daughter, Sethe attacks him with an ice pack.
The Local women and Denver restrain her and during the chaos Beloved disappears.
Sethe, dejected at Beloved’s disappearance, becomes bed-ridden when Paul D returns to see her. Sethe tells him that Beloved was her best thing to which Paul D tells her that Sethe is her own “best thing”.
Denver starts working on a job and continues to thrive in the external world.
With time, all the memories of Beloved fade away from the minds of the people whose life she became a part of.
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