I was expecting big things from this book, and unfortunately it did not deliver. 

It was written in such a remote and clinical way (though the letters from Nettie did improve this a little bit) and told so quickly that I struggled to feel anything for the characters. Yes, the situations were awful, but I didn’t feel anything, apart from one brief moment towards the end. I imagine the remote writing style was done purposely to show how damaged/closed off Celie was, especially towards the beginning, but it just meant that I didn’t feel connected to the characters or story. 

Likewise, I felt there was a lot of context missing from the story, which made it impossible for me to become invested in the characters. The huge time jumps made it impossible to know how old people were, or how much time had passed. As a result, I couldn’t fully immerse myself in the story because I was constantly trying to work out how old the characters were at a given time, or how much time had passed since the last letter. If these things weren’t relevant to the story, I wouldn’t mind so much, but they were essential to understanding it and the character’s growth properly. 

Similarly, sometimes it was really difficult to work out if a character was black or white. For a book with race as one of the main themes, it really impacted the story when I didn’t know. 

I also just didn’t find the book particularly interesting. Maybe the discussions in it were more groundbreaking when it was written 40 years ago, but now none of it feels new, or to me particularly impactful. I’ve read about or been involved with conversations about all of this before, so not understanding/enjoying the story, and not finding new point of views in the conversations it presented, meant I didn’t really get anything from this read. 

I was also annoyed by quite a few things in the novel, some of which I’ve detailed below: 

-        Having no quotation marks was so annoying. I spent half my time going back over passages I’d read to make sense of it. Some authors are able to make no quotation marks feel seamless, unfortunately that wasn’t the case in this book. 

-        Nettie mentions English people having crooked teeth – “so crooked”… English people do not have a genetic disposition to crooked teeth, and only recently has there been a difference between US and UK teeth because the US is obsessed with unnecessary dental work. I was just infuriated this was included, as it isn’t based in fact at all. 

-        There were too much ‘praise God’ vibes for me. The book did nothing but praise missionaries, and they were only ever seen as a force for good. Walker seemed to ignore all of the negative effects missionaries have had (and still do) on indigenous communities. 

-        Two thirds into the book, Celie goes back to calling Mary Agnes ‘Squeak’, even as she’s literally writing that she wants to be called Mary? This just pissed me off. 

Overall, a really disappointing and somewhat lacklustre read. I was hopeful for something more, but I just couldn’t get invested in the story or characters, and didn’t discover anything new while reading.