Where to start with Toni Morrison

American novelist, 1931–2019. Won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1988.

Best Toni Morrison book to start with: Beloved (1987), on 9 of the 17 lists it could have made.

Start with Sula, a short novel about two friends growing up in a small Ohio town. It’s the easiest way in to how she writes. Then read Beloved, the lists’ favourite and a Pulitzer Prize winner. It’s about the aftermath of slavery, it is painful, and it asks you to read slowly. The structure is confusing at first and settles as you go.

Song of Solomon is the one to read if you’d like a bigger story. It follows a man’s search for his family’s past, and it’s the most generous of her books. A Mercy is the shortest of her later novels and is set in 17th-century America.

Save The Bluest Eye for when you’re ready. It’s her first novel, it’s short, and it’s very hard to read, because it is about a Black girl who wants blue eyes. It’s a powerful book, and it’s easier after you’ve read some of her others.