The Gist
Celie is a poor black woman in the 1960s. She tells the story of her life through letters. She is physically and mentally abused, constantly put down by her stepfather and husband, and is too meek to fight back. When she meets Shug, a jazz singer and mistress of her husband, she starts to realize that being a black woman doesn't mean she's worthless, and she can be whoever and whatever she wants to be.
What We Think
Reviewed by Living Destiny
Number of Pages: 295
Honestly, is summer reading ever anything good? No. It isn't. And The Color Purple certainly isn't the exception to that rule. I really hated it. First of all, let me just talk about the writing for a minute. Dialect. For those lucky souls that don't know what dialect is, it's when you write in an accent, and you write the way the words sound. So in a Boston dialect, the word car would be written out as "cah". You can just imagine how obnoxious that would be. And this whole book is written in dialect. I understand that the book is set in the south, the dialect is unnecessary. Adding it means the whole story is written with very poor grammar and spelling, and the creation of words that just exude stupidity. Also, there are no quotation marks. Ever. When people talk, it looks like prose. There's no distinguishing marks telling that this statement was spoken and this one was dialogue. It all runs together. And this book won a Pulitzer Prize.
With that out of the way, the writing style wasn't good. Writing in letters is extremely hit or miss, and this is a miss. With the way it's written, you get no sense of the emotion in the characters. Part of that is the personality of the main character, Celie, but part of it is definitely the writing. It's so blank and dull. Even big, horrific events are written in a void of personal attachment. It makes it difficult to care about the characters, or have any investment in their lives and well being, if they don't seem to care themselves.
The storyline didn't interest me. It's not that it's boring, because lots of things happen, it just wasn't exciting either. Totally middle of the road, ho hum, blah. And that all connects back to the poor writing style. The characters too. Celie was too meek for her own good, but Shug was too bold. Mister was the typical abuser, an over controlling husband who took pleasure from power. Harpo was awful, trying to abuse his wife only because he thought it was how life was supposed to work. Nettie was almost forgettable. Dull. The only character I even remotely liked was Adam, a bit player in Nettie's story. He doesn't do a whole lot, but at least he has the emotional depth to feel conflicted over love and morality. That's fantastic compared to everyone else in the novel.
For the whole book, I just didn't care. And that made me angry the longer I read. This is supposed to be a deep novel that touches on serious subjects. And I didn't feel a thing. And that's so frustrating, when a book isn't executed well. There isn't a redeemable quality in this entire novel.
Real Teen Rating ~ F: Don't even bother.
Celie is a poor black woman in the 1960s. She tells the story of her life through letters. She is physically and mentally abused, constantly put down by her stepfather and husband, and is too meek to fight back. When she meets Shug, a jazz singer and mistress of her husband, she starts to realize that being a black woman doesn't mean she's worthless, and she can be whoever and whatever she wants to be.
What We Think
Reviewed by Living Destiny
Number of Pages: 295
Honestly, is summer reading ever anything good? No. It isn't. And The Color Purple certainly isn't the exception to that rule. I really hated it. First of all, let me just talk about the writing for a minute. Dialect. For those lucky souls that don't know what dialect is, it's when you write in an accent, and you write the way the words sound. So in a Boston dialect, the word car would be written out as "cah". You can just imagine how obnoxious that would be. And this whole book is written in dialect. I understand that the book is set in the south, the dialect is unnecessary. Adding it means the whole story is written with very poor grammar and spelling, and the creation of words that just exude stupidity. Also, there are no quotation marks. Ever. When people talk, it looks like prose. There's no distinguishing marks telling that this statement was spoken and this one was dialogue. It all runs together. And this book won a Pulitzer Prize.
With that out of the way, the writing style wasn't good. Writing in letters is extremely hit or miss, and this is a miss. With the way it's written, you get no sense of the emotion in the characters. Part of that is the personality of the main character, Celie, but part of it is definitely the writing. It's so blank and dull. Even big, horrific events are written in a void of personal attachment. It makes it difficult to care about the characters, or have any investment in their lives and well being, if they don't seem to care themselves.
The storyline didn't interest me. It's not that it's boring, because lots of things happen, it just wasn't exciting either. Totally middle of the road, ho hum, blah. And that all connects back to the poor writing style. The characters too. Celie was too meek for her own good, but Shug was too bold. Mister was the typical abuser, an over controlling husband who took pleasure from power. Harpo was awful, trying to abuse his wife only because he thought it was how life was supposed to work. Nettie was almost forgettable. Dull. The only character I even remotely liked was Adam, a bit player in Nettie's story. He doesn't do a whole lot, but at least he has the emotional depth to feel conflicted over love and morality. That's fantastic compared to everyone else in the novel.
For the whole book, I just didn't care. And that made me angry the longer I read. This is supposed to be a deep novel that touches on serious subjects. And I didn't feel a thing. And that's so frustrating, when a book isn't executed well. There isn't a redeemable quality in this entire novel.
Real Teen Rating ~ F: Don't even bother.
