Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

This book has been sitting peacefully on the shelf for a couple years.  I really wasn't aware of its importance as a literary classic.  Florida, hurricane and love story was all I needed to take it home.  Lately it's been sitting on the coffee table as decoration.  That's how pretty the cover is.  I kept thinking it had been there long enough but never picked it up.  About a week ago Ginger decided she wasn't getting enough attention.  She climbed on the table and nabbed the book.   I guess she thought it had been there long enough too.  The beautiful cover now has more than a few teeth marks but I retrieved it before she started ripping out pages.

The dialect in The Help was flat and not real.  I felt the dialect in Same Kind of Different As Me was very good and believable.  It was only used in the chapters that were written in Denver's voice so it worked well.  In Their Eyes Were Watching God the dialect is perfection.  It's written so that I can hear the characters talking to me.  The only problem is there is so much dialog the book is very difficult to read.  It bogs down the story line.

As for the story line, there wasn't much of one.  Life in Florida in the early twentieth century was rough.  Janie's life in Eatonville was comfortable compared to others.  She was looking for love.  I don't believe she ever found it.  Tea Cake was no prize, always playing tricks on her and gambling with her money.  Nothing really unexpected or exciting happened until the last 40 pages.  Up until then she combed her hair and worked in her husband's store.  Then they were uprooted by a hurricane, Tea Cake was bitten by a rabid dog, they walked to Palm Beach and back again, and moved back into a cabin that miraculously hadn't washed away.  Janie killed Tea Cake, was put on trial, acquitted and moved back to Orlando to her home she'd left behind years ago.  All in the blink of an eye.

At the end was some information on the life of Zora Neale Hurston.  What I read in those few paragraphs made for far more interesting reading about her life that all of Their Eyes Were Watching God.  I rate this book 2 out of 5.  I'll pass it along to someone who won't mind the teeth marks.