“Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board. For some, they come in with the tide. For others they sail forever on the horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by Time. That is the life of men.

Now, women forget all those things they don’t want to remember, and remember everything they don’t want to forget. The dream is the truth. Then they act and do things accordingly.”

So begins “Their Eyes Were Watching God”. I love that intro.

To be completely honest, one of the main reasons that I’m eager to restart my book club is because I just finished rereading “Their Eyes Were Watching God” by Zora Neale Hurston and I believe everyone should read this book. I don’t know if it is my all time favorite book, but I do believe it is the most beautiful book that I’ve ever read. I love this book. I want to share it with everyone. If you haven’t read it, put it in your Amazon cart now. Go ahead. I can wait here.

Hurston wrote this book in the midst of the Harlem Renaissance of the 30s. It was met with both admiration and criticism at the time and then her work was largely forgotten for a couple of decades. Alice Walker brought her work back into the light in the 70s. This book has had a renewal of sorts and is now a standard in high school English classes. It is now regarded as an important work in African-American literature as well as women’s literature and was listed as one of the top 100 books of the century by Time.

I first read this book in high school, and loved it even then. It was my favorite of anything I ever read for school, but it had been years since I picked it up. I’m so glad. I’ve fallen in love with it all over again.

The story takes place in the early part of the 1900s in central and southern Florida. The novel begins with Janie returning home from an epic journey and relating to her friend Phoeby the story of her life. Janie’s life is one of sorrow and beauty. “Janie saw her life like a great tree in leaf with the things suffered, things enjoyed, things done and undone. Dawn and doom was in the branches.”

I don’t want to tell you about the story, because I don’t want to ruin anything. But, I will say that Janie lives three very different lifestyles with three very different men over her years. She learns what love is and what it is not. What it is to live and let the soul breathe and what it is to be pushed down and squeezed by society until it felt like there was no life at all. It is a story of redemption and love.

The writing is beautiful. Hurston uses imagery in a way that makes the imagination fly, without it being heavy handed and hard. For example, this is an excerpt from the first chapter.
“The people all saw her come because it was sundown. The sun was gone, but he had left his footprints in the sky. It was the time for sitting on porches beside the road. It was the time to hear things and talk. These sitters had been tongueless, earless, eyeless conveniences all day long. Mules and other brutes had occupied their skins. But now, the sun and the bossman were gone, so the skins felt powerful and human. They became lords of sounds and lesser things. They passed nations through their mouths. They sat in judgement.”

I just don’t know how you could describe a bunch of gossipers sitting on a porch more poetically than that.

All of the dialogue of the novel is written in dialect. It may take a little getting used to, but you will settle into it fairly quickly. To show an example, this is a quote from Janie about love. “”Love ain’t somethin’ lak uh grindstone dat’s de same thing everywhere and do de same thing tuh everything it touch. Love is lak de sea. It’s uh movin’ thing, but still and all, it takes its shape from de shore it meets, and it’s different with every shore.”

There is not much else to say about this book right here other than that you should go and read it as soon as possible. It will be a breath of fresh air and will make your heart soar. Just the thing you need in the middle of the winter. Or in the summer. Or whenever you can find yourself reading this lovely book.