E-Verse Top 100 Cool Novels #86: Sula by Toni Morrison
by Ernie on 24/04/09 at 10:39 am
Sula, Toni Morrison, 1974. This wonderful short novel might seem to draw influence from the Magic Realism trend in South American literature (then growing in popularity), but despite apparent affinities with the works of Carlos Fuentes and Gabriel García Márquez, Morrison’s novel probably owes more to traditional American folk storytelling and the extraordinary history of the United States itself (she was thoroughly familiar with modernist and postmodernist trends in English language fiction as well). Sula is a historical novel set in the principally black town of “Bottom,” located geographically above (on high ground unsuited to agriculture) the white town of Medallion. The desperate streets are home to a cast of superb and peculiar characters: shell-shocked veteran Shadrack. who invents “National Suicide Day”; Eva Peace, Sula’s grandmother who lays her leg on a train track in order to collect insurance money; three interchangeable brothers all named “Dewey,” who move about in an indistinguishable blur; and of course Sula, the defiant, spirited title character, whose rejection of tradition, convention, and all manner of expected behavior sparks the novel’s flame (there are two famous immolation scenes in the book). Sula works as easily as myth or parable as modern fiction, and the characters, as well as their historical milieus, are haunting and extraordinary.
