Listen free for 30 days

Listen with offer

Offer ends May 1st, 2024 11:59PM GMT. Terms and conditions apply.
£7.99/month after 3 months. Renews automatically.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Sula cover art

Sula

By: Toni Morrison
Narrated by: Toni Morrison
Get this deal Try for £0.00

Pay £99p/month. After 3 months pay £7.99/month. Renews automatically. See terms for eligibility.

£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £13.00

Buy Now for £13.00

Pay using card ending in
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.

Listeners also enjoyed...

Beloved cover art
Tar Baby cover art
Jazz cover art
So Late in the Day cover art
Their Eyes Were Watching God cover art
Rush Home Road cover art
The Bell Jar cover art
The Poisonwood Bible cover art
Nowhere is a Place cover art
The Mirror cover art
Kindred cover art
As I Lay Dying cover art
Fahrenheit 451 cover art
The Plague of Doves cover art
Anna Karenina cover art
Invisible Man cover art

Summary

From the acclaimed Nobel Prize winner: Two girls who grow up to become women. Two friends who become something worse than enemies. This brilliantly imagined novel brings us the story of Nel Wright and Sula Peace, who meet as children in the small town of Medallion, Ohio.

Nel and Sula's devotion is fierce enough to withstand bullies and the burden of a dreadful secret. It endures even after Nel has grown up to be a pillar of the black community and Sula has become a pariah. But their friendship ends in an unforgivable betrayal—or does it end? Terrifying, comic, ribald and tragic, Sula is a work that overflows with life.

©1973 Toni Morrison (P)2002 Random House, Inc. Random House Audio, a division of Random House, Inc.

Critic reviews

“Extravagantly beautiful. . . . Enormously, achingly alive. . . . A howl of love and rage, playful and funny as well as hard and bitter.” —The New York Times

“Exemplary. . . . The essential mysteries of death and sex, friendship and poverty are expressed with rare economy.” —Newsweek

“In characters like Sula, Toni Morrison’s originality and power emerge.” —The Nation

More from the same

What listeners say about Sula

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    90
  • 4 Stars
    38
  • 3 Stars
    12
  • 2 Stars
    3
  • 1 Stars
    2
Performance
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    88
  • 4 Stars
    22
  • 3 Stars
    8
  • 2 Stars
    3
  • 1 Stars
    2
Story
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    78
  • 4 Stars
    27
  • 3 Stars
    12
  • 2 Stars
    4
  • 1 Stars
    2

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Sort by:
Filter by:
  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    1 out of 5 stars

Audio has odd repeats and omissions

Morrison certainly has a beautiful voice but is only a so-so reader of her own prose. Personally, I find the vocal softness and consistent pace makes the mood a bit samey, when the prose itself isn't, but that may be my personal taste for a more dramatic rendering. More problematic, though, is that the audio editing here is flawed. Several sentences and paragraphs are directly repeated, as if Morrison did a second take but the editor forgot to discard one of them. In addition, a longish passage of a few paragraphs on p.69 of my 2016 Vintage paperback re-issue are entirely omitted in the audio. It's not totally detrimental to the narrative to be without them, but may be a little confusing for anyone listening without reference to a physical copy of the book.

I would like to have seen better audio editing of this title and I wouldn't mind there being a choice of having it read by a professional actor to see if a non-authorial performance might raise it about the rather unmoving inflections given here.

Also, some annoying person at the audio end has grafted a loud solo guitar number over the author's last three or four paragraphs, completely distracting from the ending of the spoken audio. I really wish sound editors would NOT do this. I want to listen to the book, not to any music, particularly inappropriately chosen horrible music that is clearly a form of window-dressing/background rather than an artistic product in its own right.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

4 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Sula

So excellently written and read all of your senses are vividly evoked! Truly wonferfully BRILLIANT

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Extraordinary writing

It was great to rediscover this book I read over 30 years ago. Morrison’s ability to write about violent and devastating events that creep up on you so surprisingly never fails to amaze me. Can’t wait to listen to some more. Some odd edits where she repeats a few lines twice need editing
out in the recording but absolutely wonderful to hear her read it what a brilliant woman

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Poetic, elegant and raw

I loved Toni’s soft and gentle reading of this beautiful poetic novel. So deep, profound, splendid text, it was like savoring an exotic and fine desert for me. It easily not so much the plot, as the impredictibility, the depth, the feelings of the characters and the tenderness of the language that mesmerized me.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Extraordinary

Haunting story, beautifully written and I loved how she read this! Can't wait to pick up another Morrison.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Stunning

Beautiful & poignant , absolutely wonderful to listen to . Both blunt & majestical in the use of language & the narration .

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Good story, poor narration

I've made the same mistake once before, assuming that the author as narrator would make it especially good. In fact, though this is a great story, Morrison's narration makes it, at times, hard to follow. She has unusual intonation, almost as if she has forgotten what she is going to say, so you have to concentrate hard to get the meaning of a sentence. At times she talks very softly, at other times loud, so I had to keep changing the volume on the recording, and I missed some parts and had to rewind. All in all an amazing author, but it is clear from this that narration is a performance, and not everyone can be good at it, not even the author themselves.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

Raw & Emotionally Gripping

The story grabed my attention with its raw descriptions. Horrific at times but evocative and moving. An honest and believable read.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!