Product Description
Two girls who grow up to become women. Two friends who become something worse than enemies. In this brilliantly imagined novel, Toni Morrison tells the story of Nel Wright and Sula Peace, who meet as children in the small town of Medallion, Ohio. Their devotion is fierce enough to withstand bullies and the burden of a dreadful secret. It endures even after Nel has grown up to be a pillar of the black community and Sula has become a pariah. But their friendship ends in an unforgivable betrayal—or does it end? Terrifying, comic, ribald and tragic, Sula is a work that overflows with life.

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 3.5 based on 19 reviews)

a great read

The Bluest Eye is one of my favorite books of all time. Sula is also a great read. The insights about relationships are some of Morrison's best, the prose is clear and beautiful, and some of the events will stick in your brain for a long time.
September 28, 2008

what was the point?

I was extremely disappointed in SULA, I had to force myself to read the entire book. I found it to be very boring.
May 25, 2008

Terribly disappointed!!

I have read a lot of books, but this has to be one of the worst that I have ever read! I found it to be terribly slow and very hard to get interested in, not to mention that there are several parts that are downright offensive. Don't waste your time, there is much better reading out there!
January 24, 2008

Easy going horror

Toni Morrison writes so well it just flows out, but the horror it leads to is both disturbing and unexpected.
January 23, 2008

Sexy Sula Seduces You and Those Around Her [160][78]

Morrison's writing style is unique and demanding - and most readers like it like that.

"Sula" is a simple story about complicated people which Morrison paints in terribly artful language. It is drama, it is insightful prose, and it is a great reading novel.

Bad versus good are the constant theme. Sula is theoretically bad. And, the starched personalities of the town in which they live, Medallion, are the good. But, at the very end, Sula's once best friend has an epiphany and seems to recognize that Sula is not bad, and that other's perceptions of her were wrong, terribly wrong. But, Sula is selfish. Most of the others are anything but. And, that divide creates many of the problems, and more.

Selfishness includes getting something others cannot obtain. Sula gets an education. Sula gets to travel. Sula gets her grandmother's money and does not need to work. Sula gets her grandmother's home - large. Her life is easy. She has it all. And, the others cannot see her doing anything constructive with it. And they are right. In fact, she can be outright destructive - but not necessarily by ill will. She is just too self absorbed.

Each chapter commences with a year - indicating the calendar year of the growth of the girls - Sula and Nel, Sula's best friend who later has the inconceivable violation by Sula separate them for the rest of their lives. Before their 1910 birth, we learn something about their respective parents and Sula's maniacal grandmother. And, along the way Medallion's other "far out" characters like Shadrack (whose eccentric January 3 annual suicide celebration reminds me of the strange idiosyncracies displayed by people of John Berendt's "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil"(Modern Library)).

But, as you turn pages of this book, you learn these uncommon people in the common town of Medallion are people you would love to learn and learn to love. People like these characters are the bedrock of America.

Like Morrison's novels, this book includes more eye-opening accounts of the white man's cruelty to man with behavior that people today find hard to believe was countenanced by our forefathers. For example: trains had no bathrooms for blacks so they had to run to fields at certain stops and use leaves for paper; no blacks of Medallion were hired for construction which was located at their town; black people who ran through white cars would be threatened to be "red lighted" by conductors; black men would be arrested and beaten for matters which caused white women to commit torts upon other white women (car accident caused by jaywalker); and a drowned boy who floated down river would not be returned for three days because whites would not carry his corpse back the two miles until a ferry was available.

Depressing is something which is not uncommon in Morrison's novels, but being black in the wrong time in America's history may be more the cause of this result than Morrison's style or focus. And, the topics she addresses are serious topics which deserve to be aired, deserve to be read, and are honored to be written about by someone of her literary acclaim.

This is a very good book by a Nobel laureate - it is a must read.
December 01, 2007

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