How Far

Toni Morrison's Beloved (1987) was her fifth novel, and consequently the most controversial work she had ever written. Morrison was working as a senior editor at the publishing firm Random House when she was editing a nineteenth century article which was in a historical book and found the basis for this story. A direct connection between Morrison and this novel is best demonstrated by Morrison's statement of " I deal with five years of terror in a …

…sacrificing the other character's vitality until the very end, the novel is left hollow in the middle. However, Snitow did state " If Beloved fails in it's ambitions, it is still a novel by Toni Morrison, still therefore full of beautiful prose, dialogue as rhythmically satisfying as music…and scenes so clearly etched they're like hallucinations" (25-26). Snitow compares Morrison's writing style to Dickens, in that she believes that each of them are great, serious writers.