Beloved by Toni Morrison is the novel I've recommended most often and the one I'm most careful about. It is about the consequences of slavery on individuals and communities, and it is told through a ghost story — the dead daughter returned — that embodies the way the past haunts the present in a literal as well as figurative sense.

Morrison's prose is demanding in a way that rewards re-reading. Sentences that seem opaque on first pass reveal themselves as precise once you understand what she's doing structurally. The novel begins in medias res and loops back to provide context in a way that mirrors the traumatic memory of its characters — fragmented, non-linear, returning to what can't be put to rest.

I give this book as an argument against the idea that difficult prose is elitist or inaccessible. Morrison is demanding because the subject demands precision. Every word is doing necessary work.