Eileen Sorrentino

In Song of Solomon Toni Morrison explores issues of belonging, family, identity, love, death, obsession—in magical prose. Sometimes I needed to stop to reread a paragraph aloud and hear the cadence and rhymes of the words she chose. Macon Dead (Milkman), the protagonist, grows from a carefree, ungrounded, cruel, self-involved man to someone who finds his place in the world—a man who can live or die with equal ease. He knows who he is. His only friend, Guitar, on the other hand, goes from being a man who appears to know his own mind, Milkman’s polestar, to one without family or roots, who adopts a flawed mission to give his life meaning. Macon Dead, Milkman’s father, is an example of what happens to a man who deliberately turns his back on his people and culture for his own selfish ends, in the process losing his soul. Hagar, Milkman’s cousin and sexual partner dies from love withheld. Milkman never loved her and eventually tires of and leaves her. Their years-long sexual connection grows into obsessive love for her, indifference and boredom for him. Her mother, Pilate, is the spiritual soul of this remarkable novel. I highly recommend Song of Solomon. Read it slowly and savor. Eileen Sorrentino