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She had no center, no speck around which to grow.

I can't start to explain this book or the feeling I get each time a new chapter (numbered according to years) gives me the anxious expectation similar to unwrapping a piece of chocolate from the box of assortments - you never know what you'll get.

I can't accurately explain why this fluidity of language, this mixture of elegant vernacular, this exhilarating and encompassing flow of words forms trails down my spine and envelops me into a warm cocoon that somehow makes me feel shielded, somehow makes me feel understood.

I can't pinpoint a character who Sula reminds me of, so uniquely peculiar and atypical she is that even though I don't necessarily like her, nor am I drawn to her, I still understand the themes she embodies, her skepticism about the world, her desire to live in her dreams and her disdain for conformity.

There, in the center of that silence was not eternity but the death of time and a loneliness so profound the word itself had no meaning. For loneliness assumed the absence of other people, and the solitude she found in that desperate terrain had never admitted the possibility of other people.

I can't even start to decipher this ornately drawn friendship between Nel and Sula, this sisterhood that is too tightly boarded to enter, and yet still fragile enough to form cracks; a friendship "so close, they themselves had difficulty distinguishing one's thoughts from the other's."

They were solitary little girls whose loneliness was so profound it intoxicated them and sent them stumbling into Technicolored visions that always included a presence, a someone, who, quite like the dreamer, shared the delight of the dream.

I can't articulate the juxtaposed gloom and excitement that riddles the city of Medallion, nor the irony of the city segregated but still atop a hill that protects and shields the rest of the community from nature's doom; can't explain properly, or conjure up fairly, the delectable concoction of lust and betrayal and jealousy and strife that parallels one woman's psychological journey and self-realization.

What I can say is that this is a Toni Morrison novel that stands apart in its singularness, a book and author you have to read to understand, a book that surprisingly doesn't appear in many book club reads even though it would make for pretty interesting discussions. This is the fourth novel of my Morrison journey I started a couple of years ago. First The Bluest Eye, then Paradise, and later, Home. And I can't wait to keep exploring.