In Sula, Toni Morrison, winner of the 1993 Nobel Prize for literature, tells the story of two women--friends since childhood, separated in young adulthood, and reunited as grown women. Nel Wright grows up to become a wife and mother, happy to remain in her hometown of Medallion, Ohio. Sula Peace leaves Medallion to experience college, men, and life in the big city, an exceptional choice for a black woman to make in the late 1920s.

As girls, Nel and Sula are the best of friends, only children who find in each other a kindred spirit to share in each girl's loneliness and imagination. When they meet again as adults, it's clear that Nel has chosen a life of acceptance and accommodation, while Sula must fight to defend her seemingly unconventional choices and beliefs. But regardless of the physical and emotional distance that threatens this extraordinary friendship, the bond between the women remains unbreakable: "Her old friend had come home.... Sula, whose past she had lived through and with whom the present was a constant sharing of perceptions. Talking to Sula had always been a conversation with herself."

Simply Wonderful!

For me, 'Sula' is a book about choices and the problems of living with those choices. It is about loving someone who chooses a very different path in life than we do and what is needed to keep that love alive...or even if it can be kept alive. Sula and Nel are both beautiful characters and both are vibrantly alive. Both want desperately to hold onto their love for each other, but fate and circumstances make it increasingly difficult. The story of Sula's and Nel's growth from child to adult to old age is the thread that ties the other stories in this book into one seamless whole. Although 'Sula' could be seen as an allegory or metaphor for the rediscovery of the core self of black America, I feel the characters, themselves are too rich, to fully-drawn, to alive, to call this book an allegory. Perhaps on some level, it is, but Morrison is a writer of literature, not genre fiction. Other novels I enjoyed recently: Waiting by Ha Jin, The Losers' Club by Richard Perez

Flows like a dream that's almost a nightmare

I read through this book in about three days only for lack of leisure time. I would have rather read it straight through in one day.It's one of those books you don't want to put down because it feels like it should be read all at once. With events spanning a time period from 1895 to 1965 in less than 200 pages, this tale jumps around like a disjointed dream that you can't quite remember all of but know you were deeply affected by. The imagery is startling and, for a story that reads like mint juleps on a summer porch, it has an incredible body count. Toni Morrison does have a penchance for killing off her characters, often in creatively horrible ways. If you're in the mood for a short epic that can be both beautiful and terrible at at once and you don't mind a lot of jumping around through time (such as going year by year for a few chapters and then suddenly skipping a decade), then let yourself get caught up in this novel. Try reading it all in one shot.

Incredible

This book was absolutly incredible, mind-boggling, and creative. It left me hungry and yet sad. I was moved at the beginning descriptions of each individual character, but was completely astounded by the events that took place in each women's life as children to shape their individual adult lives. Sula -- sultry, seductive, mistress, and harlot, and Nel -- calm, meek, introverted, and homely.

Each women contributed to their own unique lives and situations, by a series of "divine choices and chance" nothing ventured or gained . . . Primarily to choke the life upon the life that was given. Sula I believed suffered from inward denial and a sense of a wounded soul, all shielded by a natural indifference of what is right, proper, or politically correct. She goes against any framework or all that was ever know. Collectively, she takes that which is her all that was ever absorbed from the women in her life and rolls it into a sophisticated Jezebel. Admiringly. The women in "the valley" can't stand her. The men don't know what to think of her -- exactly (she lives them breathless and without words"). Yet, she lives a lonely life of intimate isolations. The affair with Nel's husband drives her further from her childhood friend, whom she loved . . . A mere reflection of the girl child -- herself. Longing is what separates this women, and through all of her lovers there's no satisfation to be gained.

Nel on the other hand, suffocates the very thing she desires to be which is simply that, just the ability to be. Caught up in another's game, always longing to play a vital role in something. (I suppose that what draws the characters of both Sula and Nel together, because each possess a characteristic that the other would like). Nel comes off as sweet and innocent in comparison to the bodacious Sula. It appears that everything that ever was in Nel's life was undoubtly shared with her best friend all the way down to the man she loved.

This book is incredible. I gleaned so much from reading it. The lessons in this book are as real as my hands and my feet. I learned from Sula that environment is everything. There will forever be watchful eyes and hungry ears. Just beacause it so don't make the individual that one was "then" to what one is "now".

And . . . from Nel I learned that everyone needs a voice. To smother someone else's true identity, regardless as to whether its acceptable or agreeable to another is a crime shame. Its rather a blessing to be allowed the ability to show emotion despite whether it is good or not. And by all means never be nobody's doormat -- It doesn't matter who it is.

I believe that Toni Morrison's main message in Sula is that loving oneself is essential, but to become an isle in a sea is indeed a task. To hold oneself, to say her I am, I am strong, no crack can break me . . . Well, that's untrue everyone needs someone. Sula needed Nel despite all that happened between them and Nel needed Sula. Loving oneself is good, but loving each other and forgiving another covers a heap o' troubles.