Review – Their Eyes Were Watching God

Their Eyes Were Watching God  by Zora Neale Hurston

 From the book jacket -

Their Eyes Were Watching God, an American classic, is a luminous and haunting novel about Janie Crawford, a Southern black woman in the 1930s whose journey from a free-spirited girl to a woman of independence and substance has inspired writers and readers for close to seventy years.

This poetic, graceful love story, rooted in black folk traditions and steeped in mythic realism, celebrates, boldly and brilliantly, African-American culture and heritage.  And in a powerful, mesmerizing narrative, it pays quiet tribute to a black woman, who, though constricted by the times, still demanded to be heard.

My thoughts -

To be completely honest, I just do not see what all the fuss is about with this book.  I liked the character of Janie, and parts of the storyline intrigued me, but overall I found it to be a pretty simple story where not much happened until the very end, when a lot happened.  Janie was a really great character, you could really see her progression throughout the book, and she obviously grew up a lot and changed in positive ways, especially toward the end, but the rest of the characters were extremely bland.  Nobody stood out to me – in fact, the only other character’s name I can recall is Tea Cake, probably because he was the most significant besides Janie herself.  The ending was pretty well done … just when you thought you knew exactly how it was going to end, something different happened that made the ending really work for the book and for Janie’s story (even though it was definitely a sad ending, in my opinion it was perfect).  But the majority of the story just felt like it was plodding along, nothing special was really happening, and I was kind of bored actually.  I think the only reason I stuck with it is because of how short it is (like 215 pages) and I had committed to reading it for the Novella Challenge.  If not for that, I’m pretty sure I would have put it down after 50 pages and given up.

I’m glad I read Their Eyes Were Watching God, because it is one of those timeless classics that I always feel like I SHOULD read, but I still wouldn’t really recommend it.  I think it just didn’t click with me in any sort of significant way.

6 stars.

Also reviewed by: Becky at Becky’s Book Reviews and Kristen at Book Club Classics. (any others?) 

It’s been awhile…

So I just got back from a week-long vacation in California, which is why I haven’t been around for awhile.  I had a wonderful time with my sister and niece (9 months old) visiting our family in the San Francisco bay area, but it sure is nice to be home.  I finished two books while I was gone and started two others, so I will be posting a few reviews today as well, and other than that I have over 300 entries in my Google Reader to catch up on (even though I checked it every now and again from my aunt’s computer, it’s still insane)… so I’ll be spending a good portion of my day with that.  And back to work tomorrow I go!

I hope you all had excellent weeks, I’m sure I’ll find out more about them when I get to catching up in blogland later on today.  Sorry for the hiatus and I’ll be back later to post a few reviewes!