The Beloved seems to be a powerful book, but the fact is that I think the author needed a better sense of how they were going to write it. Each paragraph seems at times to want to accomplish too much, by dwelling into the past while still describing the present.

As for the Bean trees, our discussion in class was very interesting, but it didn't do much to change my opinion of the book. I thought the book was a slightly tedious read, though I was very glad afterwards that I had read it. Go figure.