"The Color Purple" by Alice Walker

An audio book. In the preface the author says it's about a journey she's been trying to resist - from spiritualism (love of nature) to love of God.

It begins with Celie's letters - "Dear God, I'm 14 years old." Celie's mother is ill. Her father makes Celie pregnant before the mother dies, then makes her pregnant again. She's married off to Albert (a widower with 4 kids) aka Mister, who never gives her an orgasm (she's never had one). Shug stays for a while, a supposed hussy, a Blues singer, who Mister had wanted to marry. Celie's happy for the two of them to sleep together. Shug teaches her about female anatomy and orgasms, and gets Mister to stop beating her.

Sofia is married to Harpo who wants to control her. Celie suggests that he tried hitting her. He ends up badly bruised. She goes out with a boxer and is jailed for punching the major - she didn't want to be a maid.

She finds letters that have been sent to her by Nellie, the sister she thought dead. The sister had worked for a childless pair of missionaries who adopted Adam and Olivia, Celie's kids. They sailed to Africa via England. She spent over 5 years in Africa, comparing the men's attitude to women with US white's attitude to blacks. The African husbands have multiple wives and there are friendships between the wives. A UK-funded road is built through the village, knocking down the church. Nellie learns that the man she thought was her father may not be. Reading that letter, Celie investigates.

Shug wises Cilie up about God - that the God learnt about in church may not be the real God, that God invented sex, and that the white Jesus of illustrated bibles wasn't true. But that's as far as she seems to get about understanding the male/socially constructed nature of Gods. The Africans have understood Adam and Eve differently - their word for "naked" is "white" so blacks can't be naked. Nellie writes about a rich England woman who became a missionary to escape her family's pressure to marry and to have time to write books.

Celie inherits a house. She's told "you're a black, poor, ugly, woman. You're nothing." Shug (over 50) goes off with a 19 y.o blues flautist boy. Nellie returns after 30 years with Sam as husband (Sam's missionary wife having died). Celie's children return too, one of them having tribal scars (and nearly genital mutilation)

Purple is a common natural colour that amazes each time you see it.

Doesn't seem much of a book to me.

Other reviews

• Goodreads
• Mel Watkins (Most prominent is the estrangement and violence that mark the relationships between Miss Walker's black men and women. .. it was largely ignored by most black writers until the early 1960's ... If there is a weakness in this novel - besides the somewhat pallid portraits of the males - it is Netti's correspondence for Africa. While Netti's letters broaden and reinforce the theme of female oppression by describing customs of the Olinka tribe that parallel some found in the American South, they are often mere monologues on African history. Appearing, as they do, after Celie's intensely subjective voice has been established, they seem lackluster and intrusive.)