SONG OF SOLOMON by Toni Morrison

Well, the Internet connection setter-upper men arrived yesterday (a day earlier than scheduled, as I discovered when I opened the door in my Eeyore pajamas and blinked in confusion at their chipper faces), so now I once again have Internet access without the 15 minute trek to my local library (not a moment too soon, as overhearing semi-literate teen boys trying to sign up to online dating sites using the library computers was getting a mite depressing). In short, I'm happy to be back on Blogger and Twitter with the rest of you fine people.

Since it's February, and February is Black History Month (in America and Canada; it's in October in Britain), I've decided to read a couple of books by one of the United States' greatest authors of any color—Nobel laureate Toni Morrison.

ISBN: 9780099768418 [UK]

Song of Solomon is the first book I've read by Toni Morrison. Unlike Beloved, which I read after it, I initially found the main characters in Song of Solomon hard to relate to. I found the main character, Milkman, in particular to be unsympathetic—he drifts through life, living with his parents and working as a rent collector for his father, who is one of the few wealthy black men in the early twentieth century Michigan town in which the story is set. Milkman tends not to think much of other people (he takes up with women for a few months and then drops them when he gets bored) aside from his best friend, Guitar, who over the course of the novel goes from goofy sidekick to something much more sinister—a man obsessed with ratios based on skin color, who is willing to kill to innocent people to punish guilty ones.

As Guitar's transformation begins, so does Milkman's. During a trip to Pennsylvania in search of ancient lost gold of family lore, Milkman has the epiphany that his family members are actually people, and moreover, that they are people whom he hasn't treated particularly well—his mother, his sisters, his aunt, and in particular his cousin and former lover Hagar, who is so broken up over his rejecting her that she's tried to kill him six times.

After this revelation, I found Milkman to be a much more likable character, and the remaining third of the book flew by.

I enjoyed the story because of its unique characters—Milkman's aunt Pilate, a bootlegger who carries her name in a box made into an earring; his sister First Corinthians, an over-educated maid to a poet laureate; and the Solomon of the title, Milkman's great-grandfather who, according to legend, flew like a bird from America to Africa, leaving behind slavery and his twenty children.

Another thing I like about this book is the element of the supernatural, which is subtle yet always present. Pilate is haunted by the ghost of her father, who tells her to sing. Solomon is meant to have flown away, and in the end it seems as if, perhaps, Milkman can fly too.

In addition, I love the theme of family stories—the mythology that develops over generations within a family. Tales of ghosts, lost gold, freed slaves, an earring with a name in it—all of these are part of Milkman's history; they are part of his identity, which he learns to embrace by the end of the novel. I like this because it is true of all families. Every family has its own mythology; every family has unique stories and legends, some of which begin to take on a hint of the magical after being told for so many years.

Overall, while I didn't enjoy Song of Solomon as much as Beloved, I think it is a good book and well worth reading. It's not a simple or straightforward tale; it weaves events and time together into a pattern that you can't see in full until near the end. Toni Morrison's characters are unique, flawed, and utterly believable.

Four stars out of five for a solid novel about race, identity, history, and freedom.