Morrison novel lacks story

Toni Morrison is among the most celebrated novelists on the American scene.  She has written 10 of them.

She has won the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Pulitzer Prize and the Nobel Prize in Literature. Her language is unique, describing her characters and their emotions in stark, personal terms.

What this novel, Home, is misssing is a story. There are characters and incidents fully-described, as are places and people, from the deep South mostly, though there are scenes in South Korea and Vietnam as well.

Frank Money, who is black,  is the major character Morrison follows, along with his younger sister, Cee. We meet him as he plots his way out of a hospital for the criminally insane in order to go to the sister he loves; someone had written him, “Come fast – she be daid if you tarry.”

They leave the small country town outside of Atlanta they had lived in – a deadening place – rescuing her from cruel relatives.

The novel takes place a period of deep racial prejudice in the south where walking with shoes on is vagrancy; standing still is loitering. There are incidents the two encounter that are truly horrifying.

Frank is in his 20s and suffers from a temperament of extreme aggression, made worse by the racism he is subject to. Often he literaly has no idea what he’s done: Was he drunk?  Did he kill someone?

Sometimes he goes silent for hours at a time – and his experiences in Vietnam and South Korea deepen his mental troubles.

We follow Cee as she tries to find jobs in the small town they flee to – and learns some of the realities of southern life of those days.  For Frank, “She was the first person I ever took responsibility for. Down deep inside her lived my sweet picture of myself – a strong, good man…”

The writing is often poetic, unusual. Morrison dwells in different characters’ mindsets, often changing timelines and settings.

Perhaps as readers we get too dependent on story. Perhaps the judges who gave her all those prizes are trying to tell us something.

Book info:
Home
By Toni Morrison
Alfred A. Knopf, $24

Posted by Rae Eastman on January 17, 2013. Filed under Arts and Entertainment,Book Reviews,Columns,Opinion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry