I've been meaning to read this for ages and have finally got around to it - I'm so glad I did, because it was great. The prose is just so vivid and accomplished. I'm not really familiar with the dialect Hurston used for all the characters, but it didn't take much to follow along, and I was always so engrossed that it slipped down very easily... I read the book in only two sittings because it was just so hard to put down. Apart from the prose, though, the real strength is in the characterisation, particularly of Janie. She's real and sympathetic from the moment she appears on the page, and if it's difficult to see her continually squashed down by her overbearing second husband, it's also a relief to see that, after his death, she takes her changed circumstances as an opportunity for freedom and exploration and happiness.

I'm not entirely sure that about the rabies storyline near the end, though, and the truncated self-defense trial. It seems a little melodramatic, next to the rest of the text, and I can't help feeling that it's almost tacked on as a way of getting rid of husband number three, who by this time had taken on a somewhat superfluous patina. Not that there's anything especially wrong with Tea Cake, but apparently for Janie to come home, he had to go. I'm not sure exactly why Hurston thought Janie had to return, but return she did, and at least she's happy and in control of her own destiny again, which is really all I ask for.