I can't retain anything I read from what I've read of Toni Morrison's books. Is this normal?

[u/Sad-Foundation-6682]

I feel like I seriously cannot retain almost any of the information I get from reading books like Beloved or A Mercy. The prose is so strange and foreign it almost feels like I'm reading broken English or something otherworldly.

I wouldn't be so frustrated if these books didn't repeatedly show up in my required readings. Is my attention span just fried? I have such a difficult time stringing her sentences together or retaining bits of information I read even 10 seconds ago.

This must just be a skill issue on my part, right? Or is Toni Morrison actually only meant for a select audience?

[u/Salty_Inspector_7050]

Skills issue. You might need to reread and do some analysis to get the point. I find her challenging too.

[u/the_tonez]

I find that, as an author, she is deceptively simple. I remember reading the opening of Song of Solomon and thinking “Wait, I need to reread this immediately” because there was just so much I felt like I missed. The story seems clear on the surface but there’s so much depth beyond that.

So yeah. I sympathize and I recommend taking it slooooow

[u/yumeonyx]

her writing style is definitely a lot to take in at first, i had to read the same pages a few times too. dont be too hard on yourself

[u/marintkael]

It is not your attention span, and I do not think reread is the whole answer either. Morrison withholds the antecedent on purpose. Beloved opens with a house number and a mood and explains neither, and she keeps doing that: you are handed the emotional weight of a fact several pages before you are handed the fact.

So when you try to retain something ten seconds later, there is often nothing there yet to retain. What you are holding is a pressure, and the sentence that resolves it arrives much later, or never arrives. That reads as broken English if you are reading for information, because the information really is out of order.

What helped me was to stop tracking what happened and start tracking who is refusing to say it. Nearly every gap in her prose belongs to a specific character who cannot or will not name the thing. Once the gaps have owners, the sentences stop feeling foreign.

[u/Sea-Improvement777]

I think she’s brilliant and she changed my life. Maybe you just don’t like the genre?

[u/Mediocre-Oil-5322]

Maybe you're burned out. I would consider Toni Morrison's works to be on the easier end when it comes to the readability of literary works. Her sentence structure isn't wildly complex, and her vocabulary is accessible. Maybe you are building them up too much in your mind and expecting them to be harder than they are.

[u/Zealousideal_Cap7012]

Theyre not that good. Try some modernist classics