Despite its popularity and status as one of Morrison's most accomplished novels, "Beloved" has never been universally hailed as a success. Some reviewers have excoriated the novel for what they consider its excessive sentimentality and sensationalistic depiction of the horrors of slavery, including its characterization of the slave trade as a Holocaust-like genocide. Others, while concurring that "Beloved" is at times overwritten, have lauded the novel as a profound and extraordinary act of imagination. Noting the work's mythic dimensions and political focus, these commentators have treated the novel as an exploration of family, trauma, and the repression of memory as well as an attempt to restore the historical record and give voice to the collective memory of African Americans. Indeed, critics and Morrison herself have indicated that the controversial epigraph to "Beloved", "sixty million and more", is drawn from a number of studies on the African slave trade which estimate that approximately half of each ship's "cargo" perished in transit to America.