Home [Deckle Edge] [Hardcover]

I read in a review that "Toni never puts language above story." I agree with that statement 100%, and the prioritizing of story is on full display in Home. This is a short book, but very fertile. How can she pack so much, in so thin a volume. The themes she touches on, each could be a full novel on its' own.

Frank Money has returned from the Korean war, with a deep secret. He has covered this secret with mourning the lost of his two best friends, a "mourning..so thick it completely covered my shame." Frank and his sister Cee were close growing up, he four years older than her, acted as a big brother should. And his going off to war created a physical separation, but not a division of affection.

So, after the war and despite his struggling with post traumatic stress and using alcohol to self heal and exorcise the war demons, when he hears his sister is in danger, he does not hesitate to make his way toward her and.... To say more would give away too much.

The use of Frank addressing not only the reader but the author as well was marvelous. This was done, a few times briefly to kind of comment on how the story was unfolding to illustrious effect. The language in this book is simply beautiful, and for some reason it doesn't feel unfinished, as most short novels do. And the ending is brought full circle back to the beginning, all this in under 150 pages. In fact, the reading guide at the end brings up so many good questions you will be astonished as to how one could create that many queries in a short book.

Can't think of a better way to spend a couple of hours. This may well be the best novel you read all year. You will be greatly rewarded for taking that time!

"Frank and Cee, like some forgotten Hansel and Gretel, locked hands as they navigated the silence and tried to imagine a future."

Toni Morrison's Home is a surprisingly lean novel from a major American author known for her complex and elliptical style. Home is even more lean and minimal than Morrison's brilliant Sula, which she wrote forty years ago. For some reason, I yearned for the Morrison who wrote Song of Solomon or Paradise, which is Morrison at her most complex and perhaps her most sublime. That isn't to say Home is a failed effort, but perhaps it's a passive, more subdued effort, one which does not give us the feeling her greatest books have given us.

Home tells the story of Frank Money and his experience "home" after The Korean War. He lost both his homeboys, Michael and Stuff, in the war. In a character reminiscent of Virginia Woolf's Septimus Warren Smith or perhaps even Morrison's own Shadrack, Money suffers re-adapting into American society. He fought for a racist country which still segregated and refused to acknowledge his duty to his country. He "loiters" around, which causes suspicion from cops. He wanders aimlessly, not quite sure about his own self, which is haunted by images from the past. He breeds shame from an incident that happened in Korea (I won't say what), masking it with visible and palpable anger. Money eventually tries to become more active as a man when he receives a letter from Sarah that his sister, Ycidra, called Cee, "...best be dead if you tarry." Cee is gradually dying in the hands of a strange physician Dr. Scott, who is perhaps involved in experimentation dealing with "eugenics." This propels the journey "home" for both Frank and Cee as they travel their way back to Lotus, Georgia, finding their way home like when Hansel and Gretel were lost in the forest after being abandoned by their parents. The place where they grew up, which they hated as restless and yearning children, becomes a place for redemption for the both of them.

What I found interesting about this novella is how it captures the leitmotif of Morrison's previous works as a whole, her persistent investigation through all her books of what "home" means. What I missed was the intense musicality and poetry of her earlier works, but her lean prose might find favor with those readers who have disliked Morrison's style in the past. Still, there are beautifully poignant moments such as this: "The swallows were back, bringing with them a light breeze and an odor of sage growing at the edge of the yard. Cee watched, thinking, So this is what they mean in those sad, sweet songs. `When I lost my baby, I almost lost my mind...' Except those songs were about lost love. What she felt was bigger than that. She was broken. Not broken up but broken down, down into her separate parts." Reminiscent of Morrison's at her literary peak, these moments are well worth reading and rereading.

When I heard that Toni Morrison was coming out with a new novel, I was absolutely excited. I loved Paradise and Beloved (so much so that I've never written a review of either of them) so I pre-ordered a copy of Home as soon as I could. I got my copy yesterday (the release day) and I finished it this morning. I'm not entirely sure what I was expecting, but this novella was different altogether from any of my expectations.

This novella was very different from other Morrison books that I've read. It was, first and foremost, easy to read. Beloved took me over a month to get through because it was so dense and so difficult; Home took me only a few hours. I was, I have to admit, a little surprised and even disappointed at how easy the prose was. Though the chapters switch between narrators, with a majority of the chapters being from Frank's perspective, the narrators of each chapter are always characters that have been previously introduce and are always identified in the first few sentences of their chapter. The reader never has to figure out who is talking or what is going on, so long as they can remember names. The chapters alternate between the story itself, told by the various narrators, and chapters in which Frank addresses the author directly, telling them what really happened, how he really felt, and occasionally correcting things that the author previously wrote. I really enjoyed those chapters, because they called attention to the act of storytelling itself, to the fact that someone who is not the characters is writing these things, to the idea that sometimes the author messes things up. I thought that technique was very cool, and it isn't something I've seen Morrison do before.

Possibly because the book was so short, I had a hard time connecting to the characters the way I have with her other novels. While they are good round characters, they aren't nearly as fleshed out as Sethe or the women from Paradise. I feel like this was more a novel of setting and theme than of characters, which is usually ok by me, but since this book was about Frank finding his sense of home, I wanted to connect with him a bit more. While it let me down in character development, it was great in setting. You get a good sense from the writing of what life was like for poor black people in the South, the way that injustice and violence from whites and the police was normal, an everyday hazard to be avoided rather than something surprising or unusual. Home includes a lot of the things that were happening at the time, segregation, eugenics, bebop, and obviously the Korean war. Mostly these elements are woven into the story seamlessly and organically. To balance out the injustice and sadness there were always communities, churches, and helpful strangers who supported each other where law and prejudice let them down. I loved that this book showed the ways that black people rallied and helped each other. So often we think of blacks before the civil rights movement as being poor downtrodden helpless people, but the reality is that they were often very strong, supporting each other and getting through with hard work, community, and a refusal to let poverty and hate grind them down. I think this book did a great job showing that without watering down the real pain of injustice and violence that comes with war and segregation. It's a delicate balance, but for the most part I think it's a balance that Home strikes very well.

As I mentioned earlier, the writing in Home is much easier and simpler than in the other Morrison novels I've read. The themes were generally just as subtle and nuanced as I expect from her, with the situations, problems, and solutions feeling real and honest rather than contrived or pedantic. That said, some parts of the last few chapters felt a little too obvious for me. Unlike in Beloved, in Home Morrison basically hands the reader the solution or moral that Cee and Frank have to find, explaining it to us in clear language. While this isn't always a bad thing, and in some novels those revelations are often the most beautiful parts, in Home it felt a little too easy. Maybe it's because I was expecting something more like her other novels, but the simplicity of those last few chapters left me a bit disappointed. They were beautiful, thematic, and they structurally balanced out the novel, but they just felt too easy.

So, after all this, what did I think of Home? It was good, definitely, but it certainly wasn't her best novel. I think it would be a perfect introduction to Toni Morrison for people who haven't read her books and don't want to start with anything too difficult. It has all of her usual themes, her lovely use of setting, and her realistic characters, but it's shorter in length and has much easier prose. For people who don't usually read difficult literary fiction, this is the perfect introduction to Toni Morrison. For those of us who love her partially because of her difficulty, this probably won't stand out as one of her best novels. The writing was much more mature than in The Bluest Eye, but it wasn't as complex or as moving as Paradise or Beloved. I would definitely recommend it, but it isn't going to join her other works on the list of my favorite novels of all time.

Rating: 4 stars
Recommendations: Readable prose, realistic setting, ok character development. A quick, enjoyable, and contemplative read from a wonderful author. Not as substantial as some of her other works.