Song of Solomon

Rating:
Summary: Good, but not great
Review: This book started with a bang but ended with a whimper. Right away the book introduces many interesting characters that you learn things about throughout the book and I liked that it didn't give the surprises away right at the beginning. You learn alot about Milkman and his friends and family and that was nice to read about. Then Milkman goes on a search for gold and that was when the book began to lose me. I thought Milkman's search and his spitirual and emotional journey was boring. I never felt Milkman was that likeable of a character and he meets "his people" and then he suddenly changes. I just didn't feel that Milkman was that type of character.

Rating:
Summary: A great introduction to Morrison
Review: I've been hedging about Morrison for years. Was it fear? I have no idea. I'm just a white boy from New England, maybe I was afraid that the book wouldn't speak to me, or that I would feel shut out from fully appreciating what it had to offer. At the same time, that never stopped me before from reading all types of books. Morrison just seemed different to me. Well, I am glad that I finally quit being such a wimp, and took advantage of everything this book had to offer. From the fantastic opening scene when the insurance collector is about to fly away, to the ending, I could not put this book down, and I would make sure that I would stay awake on the train ride home at night just to get more reading done. Reading Morrison ahs opened me up to yet another "new" author I have yet to explore, and I am looking forward to the journey. This was a great place to start, and an absorbing read as well.

Rating:
Summary: Tears, ebony tears, that turn to type and illuminate
Review: I've read SOS going on four or five times now, floored, awestruck, enraptured each time, every twist and turn a new surprise arrives. Milkman is a wonderful archetype for a Black man searching for what he can claim as his own. His mind, his body, his sex, money? What is his and not tainted by the past, by racism, by internal family feuding? This is what I call a "Patience Book", you have to sit with it the way you would sit with a child on a Sunday afternoon. Patience. You have to breathe in rhythm with this book. Morrison is one of those few writers that it's silly to ask all of your questions of even after you finish the book. Pick it right back up and breathe, savor each page, have patience. It is not an easy read for it is literature and you are reading, truly reading. Not surfing through pulp fiction knwoing that the hero lives, the heroine is saved and everybody sleeps well on the last page. Uh uh. Patience. What else but patience could you use to understand Magdalene, Pilate, Corinthians? My all time, all time, all time favorite literary scene that chills me, tears me up, knocks me around hard and then uplifts me: Pilate at the funeral. "That was my baby, That's my baby, AND SHE WAS LOVED!"

Honey, welcome to real African American literature, impossible to translate to film for this is patience reading. Patience, free at last, free at last!

I've read SOS going on four or five times now, floored, awestruck, enraptured each time, every twist and turn a new surprise arrives. Milkman is a wonderful archetype for a Black man searching for what he can claim as his own. His mind, his body, his sex, money? What is his and not tainted by the past, by racism, by internal family feuding? This is what I call a "Patience Book", you have to sit with it the way you would sit with a child on a Sunday afternoon. Patience. You have to breathe in rhythm with this book. Morrison is one of those few writers that it's silly to ask all of your questions of even after you finish the book. Pick it right back up and breathe, savor each page, have patience. It is not an easy read for it is literature and you are reading, truly reading. Not surfing through pulp fiction knwoing that the hero lives, the heroine is saved and everybody sleeps well on the last page. Uh uh. Patience. What else but patience could you use to understand Magdalene, Pilate, Corinthians? My all time, all time, all time favorite literary scene that chills me, tears me up, knocks me around hard and then uplifts me: Pilate at the funeral. "That was my baby, That's my baby, AND SHE WAS LOVED!"

Honey, welcome to real African American literature, impossible to translate to film for this is patience reading. Patience, free at last, free at last!

Rating:
Summary: Resonates with my black male South African experience.
Review: This is the first of Toni's books I have read. As a South African I find that the black male experence as potrayed by the character 'milkman' has a lot of simmilarities with the black male experience in my country. In this manner the book has some measure of universality. Toni speaks to all humankind but more specifically to black people. It is also easy for a person in my context and social milieu to identify with the mystcial and spiritual value in the stroy. Many black South Africans have(or claim to have) in one way or the other had encounters with the supernatural.

The book also has extraordinary literary power. It billows with hypnotic imagery coupled with cleverly devised resonances of which only a person with an authentic creativity and talent can produce.

It is a must for South Africans.

Rating:
Summary: What's in a Name
Review: Song on Solomon is the second book I've read of Toni Morrisons' and although I'v found her books difficult to read at times, their true literary value comes full circle on the the very last page, in the very last sentence, and the very last word. Fortunately, this somewhat agonizing experience is worth the wait. Morrisons' books are truely colorful literary creative works and readers will not be disappointed. In Song of Solomon "Milkman" is the son of Molcolm Dead, a black slum landlord in Detroit Michigan. Milkman sets off on a quest to discover an alleged treasure of gold but instead he inadvertently discovers the history of his family and his unique name "milkman". As a result, he becomes empowered through this exprience.

Rating:
Summary: Good book
Review: This book gets off track just like the rest of her books... Im cool with it though... there is just one thing that I don't understand... At the end when they said that Milkman jumped into the air... (something like that) did he die or did he just jumped into the sky... everyone i've asked this to doesn't know either... if u do know please email me at [e-mail] peace!!

Rating:
Summary: The Struggle for Identity in Adversity
Review: Toni Morrison again beautifully represents a community that is helpful and hurtful at the same time. A man's search for identity through the past. And a small town's history closely related to that past. Morrison brings these characters to life as no other. I tried to find the answer throughout the entire novel, but the ending is still unexpected if not breath-taking. Through Morrison's intruiging storytelling we may all "fly away"...

Rating:
Summary: A Rediscovery Of The Power Within
Review: Song of Solomon, Pulitzer and Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison's lyrically written third novel begins with a captivating scene: a man on a roof threatening to "fly," a woman standing on the ground, singing and another woman entering labor. The child born of that labor is Macon "Milkman" Dead III; Song of Solomon is the story of his lifetime journey towards an understanding to his own identity and ancestry.

The Deads are typical examples of Morrison's view of the patriarchal nuclear family and Milkman grows up burdened with the materialistic values of his father and the weight of a racist society. He is a spoiled and self-centered man, driven only by his immediate sensual needs; he pursues money and sexual gratification at all costs.

Much of the novel centers around Milkman's quest for a lost bag of gold allegedly taken from a man who was involved in his grandfather's murder. This search for gold takes Milkman, and his friend, Guitar, a young, black militant, from Michigan to the town of Shalimar, Virginia, a town named for Milkman's grandfather, Solomon, who, according to legend, escaped slavery by literally flying back to Africa on the wind, launching himself from a cotton field and leaving behind his wife and twenty-one children.

Often seen as a myth of male maturation, Song of Solomon also contains the subtext of Milkman's sister, Pilate's rite de passage. Her history embodies the process by which she acquires the very values that will sustain, not only Milkman but the entire black community.

Pilate definitely introduces a quality of enchantment to the book and the circumstances of her birth make her a character of almost mythic proportion. She delivered herself at birth and was born without a navel, something that isolates her from society. Her resulting self-sufficiency and ostracization, however, are the very things that prevent her from being destroyed by the decaying values that threaten her brother's life.

Milkman's belief that his quest south holds the key to his liberation is correct, however it is not the gold that saves him but something deeper, something rooted in the communal and mythical values of his ancestry.

In telling the story of Milkman's quest, Morrison expertly weaves together elements of myth, magic and folklore. The significant silences and the stunning absences in Song of Solomon (and Morrison's other novels) are both profoundly political and stylistically crucial.

Morrison, herself, describes her work as containing "holes and spaces so the reader can come into it," testament to her belief that the reader is a participant in the creation of her work. "My writing expects, demands participatory reading, and I think that is what literature is supposed to do. It's not just about telling the story; it's about involving the reader...we come together to make this book, to feel the experience."

As always, Morrison constructs her novel in a circular, diffuse pattern (rather than linear), arranged thematically rather than chronologically. Plot development, in Morrison's novels, centers around a complex compilation of multiple points of view, varieties of interpretations, repetition and reiteration. There is no concrete series of events that can be termed, "beginning, middle and end."

In this book, as in all her others, Morrison refuses to adopt novelistic conventions regarding closure and resolution and instead wisely chooses to employ the recurrent and pervasive use of paradox.

Song of Solomon is Morrison's only novel featuring a male protagonist. Morrison said, "I chose the man to make that journey because I thought he had more to learn than a woman would have."

Milkman certainly embodies qualities that all men seek, qualities that are decidedly masculine. Yet it is Milkman's reconciliation with the women, and thus the feminine, in his life that gives him the strength to fulfill his quest.

In the telling of Milkman's compelling and beautiful story, Morrison weaves a many-hued tapestry of class and race, ancestry and identity. The language employed is, of course, flawless: liquid, earthy and poetic. The characters are eccentric but real, the detail vivid and convincing. The result is a novel that is emotionally intense, provocative and inspiring.

Song of Solomon is usually considered Toni Morrison's masterpiece. It is certainly in the top echelon of literary works produced by any American author in any period of history.

In this novel of personal quest, Milkman eventually assumes his own destiny, a destiny that suits him perfectly and one that allows him to experience that which all men, at their deepest level, consciously and continuously, seek.

Rating:
Summary: A mixed bag
Review: This is a story about dysfunctional and distorted love. I found it to be a downer of a book to read with only a couple of splashes of light and hope for any of the characters. Milkman finds joy in discovering the history of his family and Corinthians and Porter realize functional,true love which heals his anger and gives her the strength to stand on her own. Contrary to the opinion of others, this is not a difficult book to read. Morrison's writing is engaging and descriptive but not to the point of tedium. Her style flows and each word and sentence pulls the reader along further into the story. Good thing, since about half way through I began to wonder when this story was ever going to go anywhere. It finally did, thank goodness, since I can only appreciate fine writing for so long. This book is definitely a mixed bag for folks like me who read primarily for pleasure so I have to give it 3 stars.

Rating:
Summary: Song of Solomon is my favorite Morrison book.
Review: Toni Morrison is one of the best authors of the 20th century. Her work is incredibly moving, deep, and poignent. Her writing style is smooth and passionate, and her stories unforgettable. Toni Morrison truely is a gift for any advid reader.