GOD HELP THE CHILD – Toni Morrison

This book can be read on many levels : feminine point of view, racism,couple relationship, mother/daughter relationship...it provides many stimuli for reflection.

This book is about relationships, it starts with one falling apart, seems to be something normal, a simple book for girl with a broken relationship. The reader waits for some dis-adventures and a sweet big love as a happy ending but...

After two pages you can get that the language is rough and there are too much colloquial words for a romantic fiction.

And then, by reading, you get that as reader you are aware of everything, the writer lets you know the thoughts of each character, she gives you the illusion of being the writer herself.  The reader knows more than the characters, because they do not understand what is happening to themselves. The main one, Bride, after the break is quite discombobulated. Her body is slowly changing and going back to her childhood. Her mind, that initially was going super fast toward a rich and sparkling future is jumping back and forth. The reader is guided, not nicely, in front of a past life where violence and abuse were seen through child’s eye, astonished and ingenuous eyes that try to explain situations they can not understand.

Bride has a Post Traumatic Stress “Attitude”, it's more than a disease, it's a sort of mood. She does not have a solid background of love (maternal love) to help her to cope with the difficulties she tripped on.

She is unconsciously searching for what she knows, and what she knows best is to be abandoned, left because of her skin, her being the wrong one.

She is filling her life with beauty, richness and luxury to compensate for the lack of caring love.

The fact that her body is magically going back to her childhood stops her mind from thinking rationally. Her mind that initially was going super fast toward a rich sparkling future is now jumping back randomly remembering memories.

The Author accompanies you inside Bride's thoughts, you can feel how scared she is, how puzzled and shocked, but at the same time you (ommiscent reader) can see the solution and the first instinct is to ask the character why they do not change their behavior, why they do not follow another path...

The writer lets you feel the Bride’s frustrating situation, she is impotent and you are impotent as well.

It's like a “beat romance” but the road is Bride's life and the trip is in her past, while you are traveling you can see how difficult it  was to be black at that time (unfortunately not so ancient) in America.

When you read the thoughts of the persecutor you immediately get how people think: nothing is related to others; when we do something we persecute our goals, no matter how it makes other people suffer. What people do are things and those things can affect other lives, we do not care, because we do not know.

This is a book about motherhood seen through childhood eyes. The main character is progressively becoming a child meanwhile she is becoming a mother. The real cruel mother, her mother, has no remorse: she has done her best for those  times with those believes...

The style is crude and perfectly adheres to the contents. The solution of letting the reader to put himself in the character's shoes is super smart...Ken Follet's style, totally different plot, definitely less commercial.