Most books are voiced by a single narrator. Many books make use of various perspectives of different narrators, often exchanging point of view in different chapters (sometimes marked by their name as a title-- personally I'm thinking of A Song of Ice and Fire but it's fairly common.) Usually each character narrates a different event, or two or more widely different perspectives on an event. Beloved, of course, uses absolutely none of these methods. Each chapter tends to include all three main character's points of view, sometimes mixing in the very same sentence. There are no marked boundaries like chapters. Their voices and perspectives all blend seamlessly together, and occasionally are indistinguishable. You might even say that some lines are both (any mix of Sethe, Paul D, and Denver) characters speaking together. It's a fascinating style to read.
One of the things that I find interesting about how blended the perspectives are is that it makes it even more obvious when the character's voices are different. Denver's perspective sticks out against Sethe and Paul D's, because she often disagrees with them. She's also completely rooted in the present, while Sethe and Paul D constantly think of the past. I'm interested in seeing how the voices of the characters blend or change over the course of the book-- will Sethe and Paul D still sound similar by the end? If Denver understands Sethe better, or if Sethe manages to deal with the past and move onto the present, will their perspectives begin to 'blend' better? I have no idea what's going to happen with their relationships to each other, but I'd like to see how that relates to the narrating style.
I also really enjoy the blend of view points even though it was a but difficult and frustrating to read at the beginning. There are still times where I find myself having trouble identifying the narrator of a section, especially when they switch suddenly, but I like it because it forces me to read carefully and pick up on Toni Morrison's subtle hints.
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