Beloved

5+ stars. Powerful, evocative, spooky, tender. Required reading for all. Morrison tells a captivating story and fosters reader empathy at the character and cultural level. There's an odd first-person interlude at the end of the 2nd part that, while poetically interesting, does more spelling out of motivations than should be necessary (in fact, no metaphors are subtle in this novel), but powerful nonetheless. Did I say required reading?

Also, Morrison herself narrates the audio version and her Beloved voice is like nails-on-a-chalkboard-inagoodway. Spooky as hell.