The writing is wonderful, and deep, and because it requires a lot of attention I think you get back a great reward meaning, however I had a real difficult time with the offensive language and sexual imagery which pretty well ruined the whole book for me. I feel this all unnecessarily distracts from the point of the book which is to bring to mind the hardship of the blacks during the era of slavery and shortly after. Take out all the sex and language and you'd have a great work of literature and a compelling story.