Song of Solomon

Macon Dead, III, is coming of age in the Southside of Chicago (you know, the "baddest part of town"), where his father is a prosperous and respected man of property (read "landlord"), his mother is the daughter of the first black physician in the city, and his two older sisters make velvet roses to sell to department stores while drifting into terminal spinsterhood. His parents' loveless marriage occasionally erupts into low-level violence. None of this seems to matter much to Macon (who is known in the community as "Milkman", for reasons unknown to him), until one night at the dinner table, when without forethought, he decks his father for hitting his mother. From that moment on, spurred partly by his father's peculiar version of the show more "she had it coming" speech, Milkman becomes more interested in his family, his identity, his life. He learns bits and pieces of his family history from various individuals; sometimes the pieces fit, but often they contradict one another and raise more questions than they answer. As Milkman grows older he becomes more and more determined to sort out his place in his "tribe", to learn why names are so important, and what Life and Love are really worth. His roots-journeys to his family's former homes in Danville, PA, and Shalimar, VA, as well as into his own head and heart, make for a captivating and beautiful story. This doesn't happen often, but I am tempted to turn back to the beginning of this marvelous novel and re-read the whole thing right now.
Review written April 2014 show less

There is always a daunted, freighted feeling upon cracking open a [[Toni Morrison]] book, a sense that what lies within may alter perception of reality forever. Few writers have the ability to lull the reader with a narrative so the looming assault is palatable enough to both shift their thinking and keep them coming back for more. The story is far too complicated for any real synopsis but, like most of her books, it is a family epic almost Greek in form. It's a shame we've lost her voice - there aren't enough of Morrison's books in the world. Don't be daunted by what lies within, her parables are necessary to change our world and the writing is a joy.

5 bones!!!!!
Highly recommended.

Song of Solomon is an absolutely brilliant synthesis of a mythic journey, family drama and story of origin. There are strong echos of James Baldwin, and probably many other authors of whom I am ignorant. Morrison juggles a lot of ideas without looking like she's trying too hard. The characters are compelling and real, and they grow and learn in a bumpy real-world way. Milkman, who chafes at his father's attitudes about life, waits until he is in his thirties to take his voyage of self-discovery. My favorite up-ended traditional character is Pilate, who is an earth-mothery root worker who ends up being just plain wrong about the dominant spirit in her life.

It's worth reading the book just for the names, which provide the kind of humor show more that one character describes as being vital to living life as a black woman. An ancestor of the main character, being illiterate, unintentionally accepts a post-slavery surname of "Dead" and names his children by pointing at the Bible, resulting in some of the best names in English-language literature. show less

Toni Morrison blows me away. While I didn't like this book quite as much as [b:The Bluest Eye|11337|The Bluest Eye|Toni Morrison|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1388208495s/11337.jpg|1987778], the second I finished the book, I had a strong desire to re-read it. I feel like these are the best kinds of books - - engaging, intellectually stimulating, and layered. Not to mention beautifully written. The only reason I didn't give it five stars is that the plot seemed a tad over-convoluted at times and strained credibility.

Morrison relates the tale of Macon Dead aka Milkman, the grandson of one of the first black doctors in his city and the son of a successful landlord. The story focuses on Milkman's family and slowly unearths a very show more interesting backstory involving his parents and his aunt. When these family tales reveal that there might be a stash of gold for the taking, Milkman sets out on a quest for the riches, but instead learns about his unconventional family history. As the layers of Milkman's family background are revealed, the reader sees how Milkman grows as a man in response. It's all very well done with an amazing use of language and excellent (and unique) character development. I loved the slow burn of this book.

However, there is quite a bit demanded of the reader, and in retrospect, I wished I had noted the characters as I went. There are still a few plot points that I'm either unclear on or found hard to believe.

One thing this book did cement for me is that I need to read more Toni Morrison . . .her talent wows me, and I feel like I could pick up this book a second time and get that much more out of it. show less

Toni Morrison’s third novel was written in response to her father’s death, and was her first book to focus predominantly on male characters. In her essay, The Site of Memory, Morrison wrote, “But it seemed to me that there was this big void after he died, and I filled it with a book that was about men … But I created a male world and inhabited it and it had this quest--a journey from stupidity to epiphany, of a man, a complete man. It was my way of exploiting all that, of trying to figure out what he may have known.”

Milkman is the youngest child of Ruth and Macon Dead. Ruth’s father was a well-known doctor; Macon’s mother died in childbirth and his father was murdered by whites. Macon earns his living as landlord for show more low-rent homes in the city’s Black community, and considers his relative financial success as something that sets him apart from his tenants. He is a tough landlord and a difficult husband and father. And then there’s Macon’s sister, Pilate, who lives nearby with her daughter Reba and granddaughter Hagar. Macon is estranged from Pilate and forbids his children from seeing her.

Milkman enters adulthood with little knowledge of the dynamics operating within his family. As he comes to understand some of his history, he feels compelled to discover his roots (the possibility of financial gain is also a strong motivator). Thus begins a journey, a sort of quest, in which Milkman retraces the path of his ancestors, as best he can determine by piecing together family legend. Like any good quest, he discovers much more about himself along the way.

This is a richer, more layered story than I have described here, populated with a cast of memorable characters. I know Morrison was intentionally placing men at the center of this book, but I can’t help wishing she’d also written a full-length novel focused on Pilate, a strong and colorful woman if there ever was one. show less

Have you ever felt like your life is an unsolved mystery, full of dispersed, broken parts that need reassembling? Have you ever felt like a sense of truth and order – indeed a sense of God – was far away and like chaos was all too near? That’s the situation that faces the main character in Morrison’s masterpiece.

Milkman Dead – yes, that’s his real name – is confronted by a world in which everything seems like a paradox. His grandfather jumped out of a window on the day he was born. His relatives are named after randomly chosen words out of the Bible (Corinthians, Magdalene/Lena, and Pilate, of all things). His family name is Dead, and his given name (Macon) is shared by his father. Everything is out of order and a seeming show more contradiction.

However, Milkman never strays far from his home environs. He is a black man living in Michigan in the early twentieth century. He has few, if any, friends because none of them understand his relative wealth. He is held hostage and imprisoned away from the world in this weird bubble of life.

Fortunately, as this story evolves, Milkman comes closer to understanding who he is, who his family is, and what makes the real world work. He becomes alienated from his past and for the first time, embraces what an emancipated, enlightened life looks like.

The action in this book grows and grows all the way to the last sentence. It helped to win Morrison a Nobel in Literature. Any reader who spends the couch change to buy this book and the hours necessary to make sense of the piece will be bountifully rewarded by understanding herself or himself better as they embark on the journey with Milkman. show less

Morrison's third novel is a little bit more ambitious than the first two in the amount of time and space it covers; it's also unlike the first two in using a male central character — a choice prompted by the recent death of the author's father — although, as you would expect, it's still full of strong female characters.

But in other ways we are very much still in the world of the earlier novels. The core setting for at least the first part is the black community of a small industrial town on the Great Lakes around 1940; the story is framed by two families, one that defines itself by "respectability" and its social and economic success compared to other families in the black community and the other that consists of three generations show more of strong, independent women without men, who seem to care nothing for other people's rules and conventions.

At the centre of the story is Milkman. He's officially called Macon Dead, like his father and grandfather — who originally got the name when a drunken official registering freed slaves filled in a form in the wrong order — but universally known by the nickname that reflects his mother's attempt to delay his growing up as long as possible. We follow his progress from being the spoilt son of a successful local businessman to a kind of self-realisation through the perils and humiliations of a journey back into his family's past in the South. With plenty of the kind of grotesque, paradoxical and borderline magic-realist elements you would expect in a Morrison novel, he learns that you can't be a fully-developed human being until you understand some important things about who you are and where you come from and what it means to love and be loved.

Reading this directly after the first two, it felt a little bit drier, more detached in its style: there is a lot of suffering and injustice, some brutal murders and even more abrupt and tragic pieces of self-destruction, but they are just that little bit further away from us as readers than they were in Sula and The bluest eye. It's hard to say whether that makes it more or less effective as a novel, though: it's simply a different approach. show less