NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A New York Times Notable Book • This fiery and provocative novel from the acclaimed Nobel Prize winner weaves a tale about the way the sufferings of childhood can shape, and misshape, the life of the adult.
At the center: a young woman who calls herself Bride, whose stunning blue-black skin is only one element of her beauty, her boldness and confidence, her success in life, but which caused her light-skinned mother to deny her even the simplest forms of love. There is Booker, the man Bride loves, and loses to anger. Rain, the mysterious white child with whom she crosses paths. And finally, Bride’s mother herself, Sweetness, who takes a lifetime to come to understand that “what you do to children matters. And they might never forget.
“Powerful. . . . A tale that is as forceful as it is affecting, as fierce as it is resonant.” —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
“A tragicomic jazz opera played out in four parts. . . . Morrison makes art from the cadences of human heartbreak.” —The Atlantic
“Sly, savage, honest, and elegant. . . . Once again, Morrison thrillingly brings the storytelling moxie and mojo that make her, arguably, our greatest living novelist.” —Elle
“Exquisite. . . . Morrison has a Shakespearean sense of tragedy, and that gift imbues God Help the Child.” —Newsday
“The Nobel Prize winner continues to create beauty from the anger and defining wounds of her characters. . . . Bears a lifetime’s worth of anger and sorrow, distilled to their essences and fiercely hung onto, tooth and claw.” —The Christian Science Monitor
