Sula - an escape into fine writing

SULA
Toni Morrison

Today I heard the voice of Toni Morrison in my head for the first time. As she read out each line of her book “Sula”, a clear and flowing narration from the right distance - the exact line that divides the real from fiction, I felt a powerful connection to the world in which Sula lived and the lives she entered and destroyed. Each word was so perfectly placed, it seemed like they were all holding hands with the right partners. Each line that she created was beautiful; the way in she describes a thought or a scene or an emotion. When I started reading, I was curious because of the way her name was written on the cover or maybe the name itself struck a chord. I knew she must be famous but I didn’t subject this book to the usual scanning of reviews and the summary at the back. I didn’t even read the note about the author. I turned to the page one and began to read as if I was in a hurry to get on with the reading.


Set in a town called Medallion, during the days of the first and second world wars, the story is woven around the lives of two black girls, Sula and Nell. The girls are friends who come from very different households and have completely contrasting personalities. But once together, their chemistry spawns a beautiful friendship. Sula is the free bird, the wild one who stands out from the rest of the town girls with her curiosity and individuality. On the exterior, Nell is the typical sweet and simple one but underneath she has a mind more interesting. The reason she loves Sula is because only she can bring out the real Nell who has thoughts as daring as those that shouldn’t be allowed. Nell is the person that Sula reaches out to when she seeks tranquility. She is the only person who means anything in Sula's restless, free world. The book starts with their lives as girls and later Sula leaves the town in search of freedom only to come back to Medallion after being unable to find peace or that intangible substance of life that she was after. Her uncompromising, wild and seemingly evil ways make the townspeople brand her as a witch. The bond that she once shared with her best friend becomes hazy as their differences take over and soon they are left to themselves, their lives empty and ugly.

It is a typical story if you try to summarize it, but what makes the book enchanting is the compelling writing that sucks you into its depths with its metaphors, wonderful moments and sadness. One moment you are free falling through Sula's mind and the next you are caught in Nell's. It is like poetry came home disguised as a novel. Great writing is being able to make the reader entirely abandon the environment she inhabits to step into the book and smell the earth the characters walk on, to be them, to lead their lives. I felt that because I couldn’t bring myself to close the book and I kept hoping that I hadn’t read the last line. I couldn’t switch on the TV and expose myself to my ordinary life after such fine writing. More than Nell and Sula, what I wanted was more of the words, the writing. That’s when I read about Toni Morrison on the first page. It was only right that she was a Nobel Prize winner with other awards in her bag such as the Pulitzer and the National Critics award. What I loved most about it is the irony of calling the town “The bottom” in spite of it being at the top of the hill and not the valley. That’s because it was inhabited by the black people of the region and the white people lived in the valley. The Bottom of heaven is how she described it.

“It was a fine cry – loud and long – but it had no top and no bottom only circles and circles of sorrow”