** spoiler alert ** This book was assigned reading in high school for all the other English classes in 11th grade, but mine read Ralph Ellison's "Invisible Man" instead. So I was always curious about it, but, after reading it many years later, I'll say it didn't capture me. It's memorable, but I wouldn't call it great. Alice Walker, however, says there's no book more important to her than this one.

Set in 1930s Florida the story follows an independent woman of mixed race through three marriages, all over by the time she's 42 (I think). Hurston paints a vivid picture of the south and the language -- the characters come alive through their dialogue. And there are beautiful passages:
"Janie saw her life like a great tree in leaf with things suffered, things, enjoyed, things done and undone. Dawn and doom was in the branches."
and
"There are years that ask questions and years that answer."

I'm disappointed in the characterization - I didn't particularly like or admire any of the characters. And the story itself leaves a little to be desired. Not that everything has to have a happy ending, but you would think that by husband number 3 Janie would find a winner. She does finally find the love of her life, Tea Cake (an imperfect man 12 years her junior - a cheat and a gambler who beats her on one occasion just to show off to his friends), shares two seemingly blissfully happy years of hard bean-picking labor with him, and then ends up having to end his life or lose her own in a somewhat bizarre twist.

And then she's back to square one (or two) in the black town of Eatonville, Fla., where they all hate her because she ran off with Tea Cake to begin with.

Meh.

(I did love that the man's name was Tea Cake!)