9. 'Their Eyes Were Watching God' - Zora Neale Hurston

There are very few books that I can claim made much of an impact on my life. It seems that there is an incredible lack of quality literature these days... sure, there are plenty of things to read, but how much of it will you really take away with you? This is the reason why I was so moved by Hurston's novel.

Their Eyes Were Watching God tells the story of Janie Crawford, initially a young woman who is simply trying to discover her path in the world. She is forced into marrying someone she doesn't love by her grandmother, the woman who raised her. Their marriage, however, was absolutely not built to last and Janie ends up running off with someone that meets and woos her with the promise of a new life away from all that she has known. She runs off and marries him and lives the next twenty years in a town that he more or less builds from the ground up. She's a middle-aged woman by the time she meets 'Tea Cake'. Despite the fact that he's considerably younger than her, the two fall in love and she moves down to the Everglades with him. Over the span of their marriage, Janie learns more about love and life than in all the years before. More importantly, she learns that despite what people might say, love knows no boundaries.

The book itself, in some places, seems like absolute poetry. The manner in which Hurston describes the world before Janie's eyes is beautiful and lyrical, something that is so rare to find in most novels these days. She makes me feel like perhaps it is, in fact, all right for me to love, in a most ridiculous way, someone that others deem entirely wrong for me. Hurston makes me feel like perhaps I might not be making a mistake in feeling so strongly about a person that is a little unorthodox. Enough reflection has since made it obvious to me that despite Hurston's words, there are some things that while I would love to justify them, cannot be so easily disregarded. Some relationships are simply not meant to last. Some men are not meant to be a part of youre life no matter how you feel about them. It doesn't mean that you cannot wish and long for something better for yourself when it seems that nothing is in your favor. Her novel gave me the gift of hope... hope for something dazzling in my future like the love that she felt for her last husband... or the happiness that simply being alone can provide.

There were so many things that I wanted to say about this and I wish that I wouldn't have waited so long to review it. I'll include more thoughts as they come, but all in all, I have to say that I would absolutely recommend this book to any woman that I know. Men... not so much.

Rating: 4/5