Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison It’s a song for the ages. This is the first Toni Morrison book I discovered, and for more than two decades I have returned to it repeatedly. He has cast a magic spell on me ever since, and has been my best introduction to modern literary works. His narrative never fails to invigorate and captivate.

The language is rich, apt, deliberate, uninhibited and seductive. The novel is a reflection on family, community and nationality. It is about the torment of dispossession, unlimited power and the ugly face of fanaticism. It is also about survival, human resilience and the indestructible search for identity. The narration is carefully crafted and wonderfully lyrical, a song almost without equal.

We travel with the main protagonist of the story, Macon (Dairy) Dead Jr, from birth, through the empty, mind-numbing, even creepy terrain of his teenage life. We finally witness his life or death encounter with a world, a repellent landscape, that sought to drown him when what he wanted was to find meaning in his life. His story, his metamorphosis and his flight are the foundation of the song.

Dairy he is the son of Macon Dead Sr, a rapacious, short-tempered but successful entrepreneur. The father suffocates and poisons his family, and his son’s, with his rage, his contempt and his disappointments. The haunted spirit of him becomes the swamp the Dead family plunges into on a daily basis. His success is not a balm for his bitterness. His wife, Ruth (Forster) Dead, the main object of her outrage is reduced to a pathetic creature that exists only in the shadows, daily reproached, slandered, scorned and humiliated by the husband she loves.

The dead Magdalene and the dead First Corinthians of her daughters wither from the isolation that their life in the closet gives them. Her father’s wealth, tainted with his contempt and pomposity, spawns a life of loneliness and disappointment for them. Her friends are afraid to even touch her silk stockings and expensive dresses. Like their mother, Ruth, their souls are emptied of all emotion, making them unable to love or be loved. They are frustrated, complaining spinsters whose fury at their father roars like a flooded river.

His contempt for his selfish brother, Dairy, it is uncontainable. ‘You’ve been laughing at us all your life, Corinthians. Mom. Me, using us, ordering us and judging us: how we cook your food; how we keep your house… Who are you to approve or disapprove of anyone or anything?… When you wanted to play we entertained you, and when you grew up enough to know the difference between a woman and a tow-colored Ford All in this house stopped for you.’

The world that Toni Morrison describes is bleak. in dante hells the gates of hell are flung open, and in Song of Solomon the reader is plunged into a world that has an eerie odor of slavery, with depravity looming in the background. It is a pernicious domain that produced men and women whose souls were warped by loss and suffering.

dead milkman narcissism is juxtaposed with the nihilism of his friend Guitar. Guitar responds to the chaos around him with rage. Throughout the book he sizzles, like a piece of bacon burning in his own fat. It is with violence that he tries to reclaim his own freedom. The guitar has all the destructive feelings that an organically dysfunctional society imposes on its inhabitants. Nevertheless, DairyIn order to move beyond his father’s quest for more wealth, he embarks on an odyssey to his ancestral home of Shalimar. It is the discovery of these roots that ultimately leads him to discover his inner self.

Professor Morrison raises the bar very high again with this novel. The reader is enchanted with the characters in the story, and falls in love with even the minors. There are long passages of dialogue in the vernacular unique to the time and people he describes, and they are mostly written in simple but jarring language. This book is a portrait of the world, a time that can be hidden but not forgotten, through the eyes of him and his clan.

Solomon’s Song it is a work of extraordinary beauty and integrity… a true masterpiece.