Their Eyes Were Watching God: A Novel

I can't remember the last time I read a book that moved me as deeply as 'Their Eyes Were Watching God." But like all "great" books, it may not be for everyone. A Millennial reader, for example, might be inclined to lose patience with a woman who spends 20 years of her life with a couple loser husbands before meeting her one true love. Even though there is no story without that context. It's also possible that an older generation of women readers, Baby Boomers, for example, may be more inclined to sit quietly and say nothing, while nodding and smiling gently in response to a Millennial reader's impatience. The man who finally enters Janie's life and steals her heart is not without flaws. But. He knows how to love her. Deeply, unconditionally, joyfully. There is no "happily ever after" for Tea Cake and Janie, but what he gives her in the brief time they are together is life: fully realized, fully lived. A remarkable work of literary fiction by a skilled and soulful writer who knew stuff.

I don't really have anything to say that should convince you behind the book's reputation. It's really really good. The narrative is cyclical, and I very much wanted to start reading it all over again the moment I finished. It feels - to my eyes - like an attempt to just tell a beautiful story about a black woman's life in America, unencumbered by the need to feature politics and promote the cause of liberation. A decision which, in its own right, feels truly radical for the time. When I got to the last chapter, I wept. What greater endorsement does any book need? Random practical note: the language used in the narration is truly beautiful, but the dialogue is vernacular and can be hard to read as a result. The first few chapters are told almost entirely in dialogue, but once you've made it past that point the ratio shifts significantly - so it may take some work to get that far, but it's very much worth it.

Hurston gives a window view into a place that shows a growing or blossoming of a woman's life. It journeys on a three-fold path from Janie's life with her grandma through 3 marriages that unfold new discoveries of Janie as she awakens to the power of her ability to lead herself. Hurston was ahead of her time in the sense that she was already living as one who did not need to fight the battle but had arrived and 'was.'

This must be very nearly a perfect novel, a short classic like Old Man and the Sea, Great Gatsby, Catcher in the Rye, Huckleberry Finn, with its own unique style and identity.... The racy black vernacular drives the story along while the voice of the narrator achieves levels of poetic intensity approaching myth... I found it gripping almost to the point of unputdownable from the first sentence...

I've set a goal to reread the classics I read when I was way too young to appreciate them. I first read THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD because my older friend, Becky, told me it was "great" when I was about ten. I remember thinking it was a nice story, and that's about it. Coming back to forty years later, I can agree that it's great, but there's so much more here. The most special part of Zora Neale Hurston's writing is that she takes subjects that society wants to segment into "good" or "bad" and makes them human -- thereby making them complicated. Subjects like infidelity, domestic abuse, killing for self-protection, killing as an act of mercy, colorism, white savior complex, poverty, female pride, female submission, moral relativism... You name a tough topic, and Hurston handles it in this book with a deft touch rarely found in today's world. NOW I understand why it's a classic & don't just have to take everyone else's word for it. Definitely worth a read or ten.