|
This book is really touching, and like many of her other books, somewhat sad and depressing. Ultimately, it's worth the read though. You wont ever forget it.
The purchase was just as described. Although I do think it took more than a couple of days to arrive. Perfect rating.
I read this book in high school and remember feeling frustrated by the first few pages. Thereafter I got into it and it quickly became one of my favorite books. I've read it three times since. Unforgettable characters, unforgettable story of a people and a time in American history.
And in a sense this is true. So he cock-walked around the table and asked his mother: "Are you all right."But the book is not nearly as straightforward as the author promises. He also felt glee. This begins with his fascination with his father's estranged sister Pilate, a half-wild woman of the earth who is nontheless a touchstone for much that has been lost in Milkman's immediate family. It is a bold, lyrical tale, not about the painful recovery from unspeakable trauma like the more complex BELOVED, but about people of color making their way in a modern world, testing their strength and reaching for a confidence that they may not have. All told in a language that is sometimes jeweled, sometimes lithe and athletic, as in this moment when Milkman first stands up to his father:. In her 2004 foreword to SONG OF SOLOMON (her third novel, written in 1977), Nobelist Toni Morrison writes that if she was to capture a story told, unusually for her, from the male perspective, she would need a straightforward chronology rather than the tricks with time she more typically employs. For Milkman's quest for easy wealth ultimately turns into a search for his family's roots.
It also becomes nightmarish, metaphysical, much more difficult to follow. Facts are introduced in circuitous fashion; finding a matter-of-fact reference to, say, a murder on one page, you may wonder if you missed something, only to find the matter explained several chapters later. But I suspect it touches the very core of Morrison's message, that even the relative success stories among modern blacks are tinged with the legacy of lynching and the shadow of slavery. He had won something and lost something in the same instant. The story of smart, strutting Milkman Dead (the name is explained relatively early on), born in a rust-belt city during the Depression, growing up the son of a black landlord and entrepreneur, and ultimately leaving in search of his own identity, is indeed told in chronological fashion. His quest eventually takes him to the South as he traces her wanderings and the story of her ancestors, going back to his own great-great-grandfather, the Solomon of the title.
A snorting, horse-galloping glee as old as desire. Infinite possibilities and enormous responsibilities stretched out before him, but he was not prepared to take advantage of the former, or accept the burden of the latter. By this time, the book has moved into strange moral territory, where friendships turn to enmity and family ties can be as much a liability as a blessing. An impressive book, but not an easy one.
Powerful novel, written by one of the greatest authors of all time. I read The Bluest Eye and had to have more of Toni Morrison. Song of Solomon is quite a moving novel that is beautifully crafted by an author who is second to none.
|
