Home

A minor work with evidence of genius. Parts of this are really stellar and the first two-thirds of Frank's journey is on par with her best - a nightmarish Mobius strip of world-rending violence on the road and at home. Unfortunately the ending fails to integrate the sum of its parts and is actually quite cheesy. The drop in quality is so substantial that I almost wonder if she got tired or sick and simply wanted it to be done - if age and mourning took their toll eventually. I can understand wanting to provide comfort, healing and resolution. I just wish that her picture of peace was as sophisticated and moving as all the suffering before it.

Beautifully written and rather crushing with a sense that there was no other way these events could have unfolded.

One of my favorites so far of Morrison's work. Lovely and brutal, as her books generally are, with interesting and unique characters. Left me with a slightly dissatisfied feeling of wanting more

Home by Toni Morrison is a real disappointment. I read A Mercy when it came out a couple of years ago and thought it was fantastic, on par with Morrison's masterpiece, Beloved. While Home has some powerful moments and extremely important subject matter, the language is indifferent and overall the story isn't fresh.
Frank “Smart” Money has returned from the Korean War, but he's a mess. We gradually learn that his two childhood friends Mike and Stuff died in the war, but his problems go beyond his mourning. He connects with a sweet woman, Lily, who is making her own way as a seamstress, but his problems are too much for him to take. He gets words that his sister Cee is dying and needs help, and so he heads home to Lotus, Georgia, running into his share of trouble along the way.
The one thing that makes the book stand out, and the only thing that could have saved it, is the reason for Cee's illness. Desperate for a job, she works for a Doctor who uses her to conduct experiments. This is explosive stuff, but Morrison makes it seem like a minor aspect of the novel, which mostly centers on Frank and his problems.
It's a very short book and fast read, though, so I'm still glad I read it.

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.