Go Tell It on the Mountain

The product was in o.k condition but it took forever for me to recieve it

I loved reading this book, although I have to say I think it definitely deserves a second (and probably third) read pretty quickly. The experience of the characters was so far from my own life that I was trying to keep up a lot of the time and am pretty sure I missed quite a bit. It was so interesting to follow the plot over generations and as it traveled across the U.S., but also to read about the mystical elements of observance in the Black church, which I hadn't given much thought to previously, and how those elements are similar to or different from (what I would call) mysticism in other traditions.

Go Tell It On the Mountain by James Baldwin was EXCELLENT!! I read it for a class a few years ago and fell in love with James Baldwin. Terrific masterpiece!

It's funny, the reviewer below me also first read this back in the 70's - as did I. I started out the unofficial beginning of this Fall by re-reading the "classics." Some are actual classics, and others are Lit i have left over from college and high school. Not sure where this one fits in.

I just finished this book, and feel it's one of the best books i ever read. It's not an "easy read." You do have to get ready to understand the jumping back and forth to different eras. But once you do, it's worth the effort to read - totally.

Just a wonderful book and story, and fantastically written. I'm in awe of it. I love finishing a book that really leaves you saying "wow."

I wanted to dislike this book. James Baldwin is anathema to me--but this book--as a work of art, as an example of human effort--is outstanding.

Not at first, though. The exordium is tedious and boring, and I was flipping pages with alacrity, saying to myself: "AHA! Overrated! And I know why." But once the narrative sea-legs get set with the history of Gabriel Grimes, the novel becomes special. You can tell Baldwin read almost every book in his local library, and that he had uncommon talent at organizing words, piecing sentences together, and constructing something greater than the sum of its parts.

The heavy emphasis on religion would normally be an impediment to my enjoyment of any work, but here, though it did get old, it did not vitiate the flow. God played an important role in young Baldwin's life, and the book reflects those years.

The MLA has decreed to the unwashed masses that Go Tell It On The Mountain is the thirty-ninth best novel of the 20th century. That places it ahead of superior works such as Pale Fire, Of Human Bondage, and Lord of the Flies (to name only three), but also behind inferior works such as To The Lighthouse and the Studs Lonigan Trilogy.

No matter the placement, this is a significant book that deserves to be read on its own merits.