Song of Solomon

Morrison, Toni

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0099768410 ISBN 13: 9780099768418

Publisher: Vintage, 1998

‘Song of Solomon...profoundly changed my life’ Marlon James

Macon ‘Milkman’ Dead was born shortly after a neighbourhood eccentric hurled himself off a rooftop in a vain attempt at flight. For the rest of his life he, too, will be trying to fly.

In 1930s America Macon learns about the tyranny of white society from his friend Guitar, though he is more concerned with escaping the familial tyranny of his own father. So while Guitar joins a terrorist group Macon goes home to the South, lured by tales of buried family treasure. But his odyssey back home and a deadly confrontation with Guitar leads to the discovery of something infinitely more valuable than gold: his past and the origins of his true self.
‘The story of Milkman Dead and Guitar had me in thrall’ Salman Rushdie, New York Times

BY THE NOBEL PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR OF BELOVED

Winner of the PEN/Saul Bellow award for achievement in American fiction

Review:

In an effort to hide his southern, working class roots, Macon Dead, an upper-class northern black businessman, tries to insulate his family from the danger and despair of the rank and file blacks with whom he shares the neighbourhood. The plan leads his son, "Milkman"--a named he earned after his mother nursed him well past the proper age--onto a path exactly opposite the one his father had hoped. Milkman is driven into the arms of a violent, lower-class woman, into a clandestine circle of blacks who repay white violence in kind and into an awareness that he can fulfil his own potential by understanding the mistakes of his ancestors as they relate to his own.

Review:

"Toni Morrison makes me believe in God. She makes me believe in a divine being, because luck and genetics don’t seem to come close to explaining her" (Guardian)

"A rhapsodic work... Intricate and inventive" (New Yorker)

"Stunningly beautiful... Full of magnificent people... They are still haunting my house. I suspect they will be with me forever" (Anne Tyler Washington Post)

"A complex, wonderfully alive and imaginative story...glittering" (Daily Telegraph)

"Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon grips as a novel of extraordinary truth, wisdom and humour" (Auberon Waugh Evening Standard)