Home (edition 2012)

Another home run by Toni Morrison. In one short novel, so much is dealt with: PTSD, race issues, loss of loved ones, sexuality, and more. ( )

This was an incredibly beautiful but so painful story of an African American brother and sister (Frank and Cee), who grew up in the 50's. Their parents were basically forced from their home in Texas and left to move their family back home to Georgia where they move in with Grandpa and his resentful and selfish wife. The children are raised in poverty and without a speck of sentiment or kindness since their parents are working continuously to try to make ends meet. The only thing they have is each other. That tie is a strong one the later moves Frank to return, post-Korea, to the home that he has no desire to ever see again to save his sister.
Ms. Morrison writes of loss, both of persons and self, and redemption. She uses no spare words, and because of that each sentence holds much meaning. Home is a quick read that will stay with me for a long time. ( )

“Her themes—identity, community, the resoluteness of both good and evil—are epic, and her language uniquely her own. . . . Taut and muscular, Home wastes not a word. . . . In sentences balanced like proverbs, the Nobel Prize winner conjures up the community of country women Frank asks to help save Cee.” ( )

Powerful, painful, and moving. ( )

Toni Morrison is master of the English language. It doesn't matter if she's talking about flowers, or shoes, or syphilis, there is a rhythm to her words that feeds beautifully from one sentence to the next. It's that thing called “flow” students of creative writing are taught, the same flow instructors of creative writing have difficulty teaching. If I were a teacher of creative writing, and a student asked me to explain flow, I'd open up any Morrison novel to a random page of narrative and begin reading aloud. I'd ask the class to pay close attention to the placing of each noun and verb, the structure of one sentence and the next, the choice and sound of each word. I imagine it is an experience to hear Morrison read aloud.

Morrison is also a very talented storyteller, when she has a story to tell. I've heard it said that she ran out of stories in the late 1980s (the Nobel curse, some say). I'm not sure if this is true or not, but I do feel that of the handful of Morrison novels I have read, the most memorable were those from the first half of her career. Her newer works are still brilliant in their language, but as I walk away from them, I feel as if I've read a beautiful collection of poetry that offered no lasting imagery.

Home is such a work, however a clear step up from the previous A Mercy, a novel so thin on story it is forgotten before one can return the book to the shelf. The chronology and perspectives of Home are presented in a way which capitalizes on the language but doesn't do as much for the story. Nevertheless, there is a story here, still thin but recognizable, memorable and slightly haunting.

Before I return to any of Morrison's post-Beloved titles, I believe I'll explore her entire catalog of the 70s and 80s. I like both storytelling-Morrison and linguistic-Morrison, but most days I'd take a good story over a beautifully crafted drawn-out vignette. ( )