Sula (Vintage International) (Paperback)
Staff Reviews
"Then summer came. A summer limp with the weight of blossomed things. Heavy sunflowers weeping over fences; iris curling and browning at the edges far away from their purple hearts; ears of corn letting their auburn hair wind down to their stalks. And the boys. The beautiful, beautiful boys who dotted the landscape like jewels, split the air with their shouts in the field, and thickened the river with their shining wet backs. Even their footsteps left a smell of smoke behind.
It was in that summer, the summer of their twelfth year, the summer of the beautiful black boys, that became skittish, frightened, and bold -- all at the same time.
In that mercury mood in July, Sula and Nel wandered about the Bottom looking for mischief." from Sula by Toni Morrison
— From Six Nearly Perfect Short NovelsNel and Sula's 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.
“Exemplary. . . . The essential mysteries of death and sex, friendship and poverty are expressed with rare economy.” —Newsweek
“In characters like Sula, Toni Morrison’s originality and power emerge.” —The Nation
“Enchanting. . . . Powerful.” —Chicago Daily News
“Toni Morrison is not just an important contemporary novelist but a major figure in our national literature.” —The New York Review of Books
“Sula is one of the most beautifully written, sustained works of fiction I have read in some time. . . . [Morrison] is a major talent.” —Elliot Anderson, Chicago Tribune
“As mournful as a spiritual and as angry as a clenched fist . . . written in language so pure and resonant that it makes you ache.” —Playboy
“In the first ranks of our living novelists.” —St. Louis Post-Dispatch
“Toni Morrison’s gifts are rare: the re-creation of the black experience in America with both artistry and authenticity.” —Library Journal
“Should be read and passed around by book-lovers everywhere.” —Los Angeles Free Press