I always feel a bit strange reviewing classics, especially classics I enjoyed. (If you would consider this a classic at under forty years old, which is questionable. It's such a sketchy definition.) Something feels a bit off about singing the praises of a book that people have been widely discussing for literal decades in every form imaginable. Everything I have to say has already been said a hundred times, and a hundred times more eloquently than I could ever say it. But I mean like why let that stop me.

I loved this book. I haven't had the greatest of luck with my reading this year so it's been a long time since a novel pulled me in so deeply. I was utterly entranced and couldn't put it down. I was fascinated by Celie and her story and her life. My favorite aspect was how this book is essentially just a character study. Plenty of things happen, but the main point of the story is just following Celie's life from childhood through middle age.

I loved the epistolary format. The book is told through letters Celie writes to god and then eventually letters she shares with other people. It's a bit more like diary entries than letter writing for the most part, but I really enjoyed that. It gives you the chance to see the story solely from her eyes for most of the book. No narration, just Celie and her own words.

Towards the later half, the book kind of takes a turn and starts focusing a little on life in Africa which was strange to me. I don't want to talk too in depth on that because it gets a little spoilery if you care about such things, but I don't think the second half worked as well for me as the first half in that regard. I don't think it was bad necessarily, just that I was much more interested in Celie's small life than the outer world as a whole.

I also struggled a bit following the timeline, but I nearly always do when we aren't given exact dates and the passage of time is a bit ill defined. It makes sense for Celie's character and the way she experiences the world, and it didn't bother me too much, but this is just kind of a normal struggle for me.

I dunno. This is a great book. It's pretty widely accepted that this is a great book. Go read it if you haven't already because it's just great.