I first read Song of Solomon years ago, long before GR existed with its reviews and ratings, so I am very pleased that, following this reread, I can now give it the 5 stars it deserves. This is a highly entertaining read, but one that is also complex and multilayered. Beautifully written, the language is rich, it sings, evoking time and place. The novel contains a cast of truly remarkable and memorable characters while offering various themes for the reader to explore and contemplate. A rewarding work of fiction and one of Morrison’s best.

It's time to review this thang. Not because I want to but because I have to. I read this in February (so around 9 months ago) and was left utterly in shock: Unsuspectedly, I had discovered a new favorite book. But unlike most of my other favorite books, Song of Solomon proved to be a book a didn't understood. I mean I did understand parts of it, and feel like I "got it" in my heart, but it also completely overwhelmed me, left me confused and unprepared to ever really talk about it.

n  “You wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down.”n

Song of Solomon is HUUUGE in scope. This book is so layered, so rich in theme, with so many complex characters, amazing dialogue (that makes the characters feel like real people), complicated and abstruse plot points, it was impossible to catch on to all of it – or even most of it. What was most important to me was that I loved it, that I cherished it, and that I will return to it in future years.

My most used annotation whilst reading the book was "WTF", followed closely by "WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON?" It took me a long time to figure out even the base structure of the story, what the characters stood for, what their motivation and goals were. You won’t believe how creeped out I was by Ruth’s behaviour in the beginning (before I figured out that piece of the puzzle) … lord, I almost put the book down.

Like Morrison's first two novels, The Bluest Eye and Sula, Song of Solomon is, at its core, a coming of age story. But unlike her first two novels, it's also a family saga, and one that has a man at its centre. Milkman is Morrison's first male protagonist.

However, despite its male focus and its exploration of masculinity and Black manhood, the women of Song of Solomon were the ones who made this book truly stand out to me. In this novel, women are those left behind. We see them trapped in their marriages and in their societal niches, crushed by the heavy burden of survival. While men are associated with flying and fleeing, women are associated with groundedness and earthliness.

We see them brought to madness at the loss of their lovers and husbands, and we see the anguish that comes when they are denied sexual love and sexual expression. Women in Song of Solomon are obsessive in their love of the men in their lives, relying on these partners as representation of "home" or of a safe place.

n  “You can't own a human being. You can't lose what you don't own. Suppose you did own him. Could you really love somebody who was absolutely nobody without you? You really want somebody like that? Somebody who falls apart when you walk out the door? You don't, do you? And neither does he. You're turning over your whole life to him. Your whole life, girl. And if it means so little to you that you can just give it away, hand it to him, then why should it mean any more to him? He can't value you more than you value yourself.”n

Most of the women in her novel have smothered their own identities, their voices, by depending on men for a sense of self. As a result, the silenced voice often seeks self-destructive or otherwise hurtful forms of expression.

The only women capable of living independently, without men, are those who have been marginalized by society. Therefore, we understand the relationship between women and men in the novel as inextricably linked to the way in which we understand the society in which they live.

Unlike Hagar and Ruth, Lena finds her voice as the novel progresses and begins forming her own identity. From childhood, Lena and her sister are silenced by their father. Lena is saved from mimicking her mother Ruth’s passivity, however, because she finds her voice in a confrontation with her brother.

While speaking with him about their childhood, she remembers how she used to sit and make artificial roses: “[Making roses] kept me quiet. That’s why they make those people in the asylum weave baskets and make rag rugs. It keeps them quiet. If they didn’t have the baskets they might find out what’s really going on and do something.”

Realizing how she was silenced, Lena confronts her brother and rejects the patriarchal domination under which she has been living: “What do you know about somebody not being good enough for somebody else? You’ve been laughing at us all your life. Corinthians. Mama. 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 anybody or anything? I was breathing air in the world thirteen years before your lungs were even formed. Corinthians, twelve but now you know what's best for the very woman who wiped the dribble from your chin because you were too young to know how to spit. Our girlhood was spent like a found nickel on you. When you slept, we were quiet; when you were hungry, we cooked; when you wanted to play, we entertained you; and when you got grown enough to know the difference between a woman and a two-toned Ford, everything in this house stopped for you. Where do you get the right to decide our lives? I’ll tell you where. From that hog’s gut that hangs down between your legs. I didn't go to college because of him. Because I was afraid of what he might do to Mama. You think because you hit him once that we all believe you were protecting her. Taking her side. It's a lie. You were taking over, letting us know you had the right to tell her and all of us what to do. Well, let me tell you something, baby brother: you will need more than that. I don’t make roses anymore, and you have pissed your last in this house. Now get out of my room.”

Lena’s new awareness makes her angry enough to speak out. She now claims the identity that was crushed by her father and brother. These men are no longer interacting with an echo, with a self always subordinate to their own; instead, they face a strong, self-aware individual demanding autonomy. Lena makes the step towards self-expression.

n  “Pilate can’t teach you a thing you can use in this world. Maybe the next, but not this one.”n

Pilate is set apart from the other women in the novel because she maintains a distinctive identity all along, expressing herself though song and through wise, direct speech. Pilate keeps her own literal and figurative voice for two reasons. First, she has a sense of personal identity that does not depend on men or society for validation.

Like most African-Americans of her era, Pilate lacks a documented, societally recognized history; so, she chronicles her own history instead. Most importantly, she always wears her name. Written on a scrap of paper by her father, it travels with her inside her earring, which itself is a small brass snuffbox belonging to her mother. This tangible reminder of personal history gives her strength.

When Pilate finds that she is “isolated” from others, especially from men, because of her missing navel—her mystifying lack of a biological history—she learns to give birth to herself, so to speak.

Morrison dedicated this book to her father. In the introduction, she claimed that she was only ever able to write this book after he had died – maybe even because of his death. The loss of her father pushed her to this story. The novel's epitaph – The fathers may soar / And the children may know their names – accentuates the significance of fathers’ deeds on their children’s life and identity. Morrison said: “It was the death of that girl–the one that lived in his mind–that I mourned when he died.” In her father’s mind, the world was full of infinite possibilities for her, he believed in her. Becoming an adult (something you may only ever become after you lose your parents), was learning to see that potential within yourself, and start believing that others might see it too.

n  “What difference does it make if the thing you scared of is real or not?”n

Morrison makes her protagonist unearth the history of his family and hence the myths of African slaves of the South to comprehend his true identity. Moreover, the most congenial character portrayed in the novel is Pilate who has sustained the way of life and values of her forefathers in the heart of modern America and also acts as the guardian of her nephew who is supposed to incarnate the myths of their ancestors.

Song of Solomon draws on diverse mythological traditions, particularly biblical, Greco-Roman, and African to create a unique narrative. It's a story that requires its readers to participate in order to piece together the seemingly incompatible elements of the story to make a sensible and meaningful whole. You have to be attentive, go back, read things twice over ... and still, many references and plot points will fly over your head. AND THAT'S OKAY.

The opening scene of Song of Solomon is one you won't quickly forget: Robert Smith, an insurance agent in an unnamed Michigan town, leaps off the roof of Mercy Hospital wearing blue silk wings and claiming that he will fly to the opposite shore of Lake Superior. Mr. Smith plummets to his death. The next day, Ruth Foster Dead, the daughter of the first Black doctor in town, gives birth to the first Black child born in Mercy Hospital, Milkman Dead.

Discovering at age four that humans cannot fly, young Milkman loses all interest in himself and others. He grows up nourished by the love of his mother and his aunt, Pilate. He is taken care of by his sisters, First Corinthians and Magdalene (called Lena), and adored by his lover and cousin, Hagar. Milkman does not reciprocate their kindness and grows up bored and privileged. He becomes a self-absorbed, petulant, and rootless man.

n  “He ain’t a house, he’s a man, and whatever he need, don’t none of you got it.”n

Throughout his life, Milkman has a very strained relationship to his father. One day, he hits Macon after he abuses Ruth. The act of retaliation represents Milkman’s loss of innocence and transition into full adulthood; he realizes that he no longer fears his father: “There was the pain and shame of seeing his father crumple before any man–even himself. Sorrow in discovering that the pyramid was not five-thousand-year wonder of the civilized world, mysteriously and permanently constructed by generation after generation of hardy men who had died in order to perfect it, but that it had been made in the back room at Sears, by a clever window dresser, of papier-maché, guaranteed to last a lifetime.”

Prior to this moment, his father, like the pyramid, is a mysterious object of wonder; he is both fearsome and omnipotent. Yet, just as if Milkman smashed a paper-maché pyramid, Macon’s image crumbles when Milkman retaliates. Milkman realizes that his father’s image is merely a façade, and that he is truly weak and vulnerable.

n  “He himself did nothing. Except for the one time he had hit his father, he had never acted independently, and that act, his only one, had brought unwanted knowledge too, as well as some responsibility for that knowledge.”n

By the time Milkman reaches the age of thirty-two, he feels stifled living with his parents and wants to escape to somewhere else. Macon Jr. informs Milkman that Pilate may have millions of dollars in gold wrapped in a green tarp suspended from the ceiling of her rundown shack. With the help of his best friend, Guitar Bains, whom he promises a share of the loot, Milkman robs Pilate but inside the green tarp, Milkman and Guitar find only some rocks and a human skeleton (= they later find out that the skeleton is Milkman's grandfather, Macon Dead I).

Guitar is especially disappointed not to find the gold because he needs the funds to carry out his mission for the Seven Days, a secret society that avenges injustices committed against African-Americans by murdering innocent whites.

Thinking that the gold might be in a cave near Macon’s old Pennsylvania farm, Milkman leaves his hometown in Michigan and heads south, promising Guitar a share of whatever gold he finds.

Before he leaves, Milkman severs his romantic relationship with Hagar, who is driven mad by his rejection and tries to kill him on multiple occasions. Instead of succeeding, Hagar finds herself "paralyzed" by her obsessive love for him. Hagar’s intense and unexpressed emotion ultimately turns self-destructive and probably causes her death in the end.

n  “He meant that if you take a life, then you own it. You responsible for it. You can’t get rid of nobody by killing them. They still there, and they yours now.”n

When there is no gold to be found in Montour County, Milkman starts looking for his long-lost family history. Milkman meets Circe, an old midwife who helped deliver Macon Jr. and Pilate. Circe tells Milkman that Macon’s original name was Jake and that he was married to an indigenous girl, Sing.

Encouraged by his findings, Milkman heads south to Shalimar, his grandfather’s ancestral home in Virginia. Milkman does not know that he is being followed by Guitar, who wants to murder Milkman because he believes that Milkman has cheated him out of his share of the gold.

While Milkman initially feels uncomfortable in Shalimar’s small-town atmosphere, he grows to love it as he uncovers more and more clues about his family history. Milkman finds that Jake’s father, his great-grandfather, was the legendary flying African, Solomon, who escaped slavery by flying back to Africa.

Milkman’s findings give him profound joy and a sense of purpose. Milkman becomes a compassionate, responsible adult. After surviving an assassination attempt at Guitar’s hands, Milkman returns home to Michigan to tell Macon Jr. and Pilate about his discoveries.

n  “Don’t nobody have to die if they don’t want to.”n

At home, he finds that Hagar has died of a broken heart and that the emotional problems plaguing his family have not gone away. Nevertheless, Milkman accompanies Pilate back to Shalimar, where they bury Jake’s bones on Solomon’s Leap, the mountain from which Solomon’s flight to Africa began. Immediately after Jake’s burial, Pilate is struck dead by a bullet that Guitar had intended for Milkman. Heartbroken over Pilate’s death but invigorated by his recent transformation, Milkman calls out Guitar’s name and leaps toward him. Milkman has finally learned to fly.

No sé si seré capaz de hacerle una reseña a este libro (supongo que sí), pero de momento sepan que es maravilloso y que, aunque en algunos tramos parezca pesado, está genial. El final es increíble y da la sensación de circularidad, algo que me encanta en los libros. Se termina donde empieza. Hay que leer a Toni Morrison alguna vez en la vida.

Toni Morrison blows me away. While I didn't like this book quite as much as The Bluest Eye, the second I finished the book, I had a strong desire to re-read it. I feel like these are the best kinds of books - - engaging, intellectually stimulating, and layered. Not to mention beautifully written. The only reason I didn't give it five stars is that the plot seemed a tad over-convoluted at times and strained credibility.

Morrison relates the tale of Macon Dead aka Milkman, the grandson of one of the first black doctors in his city and the son of a successful landlord. The story focuses on Milkman's family and slowly unearths a very interesting backstory involving his parents and his aunt. When these family tales reveal that there might be a stash of gold for the taking, Milkman sets out on a quest for the riches, but instead learns about his unconventional family history. As the layers of Milkman's family background are revealed, the reader sees how Milkman grows as a man in response. It's all very well done with an amazing use of language and excellent (and unique) character development. I loved the slow burn of this book.

However, there is quite a bit demanded of the reader, and in retrospect, I wished I had noted the characters as I went. There are still a few plot points that I'm either unclear on or found hard to believe.

One thing this book did cement for me is that I need to read more Toni Morrison . . .her talent wows me, and I feel like I could pick up this book a second time and get that much more out of it.

I was some way into the novel before I realized that it is, basically, a Bildungsroman. It charts the growth into maturity of Macon Dead, Jr., nicknamed Milkman. Born into middle-class affluence, and suffering from its ennui, Milkman is torn between a dominating landlord father and a loveless, hopeless mother. He wishes to escape from home, from the heavy hand of the past, but he does not know what he wishes to escape to. In search of the gold his Aunt Pilates had supposedly taken from a white man she and her brother killed, Milkman journeyed to the South (Virginia) where he experienced black communal life--connected to Nature, free of the North's materialistic individualism--and so recovered his lost family history.

If this sounds like romanticizing the black South, it is. Sure, Morrison depicts the South as proud and violent (Milkman gets into a fight in the store), as racist and greedy (Macon Dead Sr.'s father was shot dead by the whites who wanted his farm). But the Southern blacks, in this novel, are essentially kind and hospitable. They do not take vengeance for injustices like the seven Northern blacks who call themselves the Days, and kill a white person for every black person killed by a white, in order to preserve the racial ratio. No, they do not live for the Days, but keep the race memories for forgetful Northern blacks.

What is this family history kept for Milkman? That his great grandfather Solomon was a big man in that part of the country, who had many many children (like Father Abraham), but decided to fly off (literally) and leave his wife and children. This is not history, but allegory, of a magical kind. The trope of the flying man opens the novel and recurs throughout. Allegory simplifies history and character in the hope of achieving archetypes. I am not sure that is achieved here. Guitar plays the Cain to Macon Jr.'s Abel, but that archetypal relationship is constantly troubled by a lack of convincing reason for the attempted murder. Too much plot credibility is sacrificed at the altar of symbolism.

Not only does allegory oversimplify history (some would want to praise it as "mythologizing"), it also does not completely cohere in Morrison's hands. Solomon's flight is supposed to be transcendental, in contrast with others who flew and fell to their death. However, Morrison editorializes in an aside that, unlike men, women could fly while staying on the ground. But if women are superior to men in this manner, where does that leave poor Solomon? In mid-air, I guess.

The editorial comment seems to promote feminism, but I find the depiction of women, and their relationships with men, in this novel troubling. Women like Ruth Foster (Macon Jr.'s mother) and Hagar (his lover) give up everything, including their selves, for romantic love, the first with her father, the second with her cousin. If the women are not crazy for love, they are just crazy, like the bootlegger and witch Pilates (she who does not have a navel), her slow-witted daughter Reba, and Circe who took care of Macon Sr. and Pilates when they fled from the whites who killed their father. The crazies, living by themselves at the margins of society, are cut off from the community Morrison valorizes elsewhere.

The stories of all these women, lovers or otherwise, are subordinated to the stories of men. Milkman's sisters Magdalena called Lena and First Corinthians take center-stage for a while, but they always give way to Milkman. It is his redemption (easy enough, since all he has to do is to bury the woman he "killed" by rejecting her heartlessly), his assumption of patriarchal authority (he tells Pilates what is actually in her bag, and so serves as the envoy of her father's ghost) and his fraternal struggle with his best friend Guitar that the novel ends with. Love for the Patriarch is ultimately symbolized by the discovery that the bones Pilates carries and keeps with her do not belong to the murdered white man, but to her father. Where does that leave Morrison's feminism?

The moment the novel revealed that the father's body, washed up from its shallow grave, was threw into the same cave where Macon Sr. and Pilates murdered the white man, I guessed the secret of the bones. I doubt I am unusual in doing this. The problem lies in the storytelling. It is just not deft enough. Too labored also is the recovery of the family history, bit by bit, from different people. The novel begins ploddingly, with a long set piece about the birth of Milkman, quickens with interest in the chapters about Pilates's strange household and Corinthian's awkward love affair, and then drags out the meanderings of Milkman in the South. The women in the novel are more intriguing than the men but they don't have enough air time. This is, after all, not the Song of Sheba.

“If you surrendered to the air, you could ride it.”

Everything is right in this novel. Morrison has such a deft understanding of what makes a person and she’s able to convey that so efficiently to the reader. She has a way of plotting books such that every scene feels inevitable - her use of the psychosocial, of family lineages, and of the literary cannon creates a narrative that feels so resonantly true, such that the events that unfold represent the only possible outcome.

n  Song of Solomonn begins and ends with a leap, a man hurling himself into the air, an act of surrender. Book-ended between these (attempted) acts of flight, a rich and beautiful work of literature slowly, gradually, takes wing.

This is the fifth Toni Morrison book I’ve read (after Beloved, The Bluest Eye, Home and Sula), and I think of these five, Song of Solomon is the one that asks the most of its reader. It’s not a book that enchants immediately. The characters – at least in the beginning – are all awful or at least infuriating, and it’s difficult to know who to get behind. But as the story unfolds, the complexity and humanity of the characters are revealed so that they begin to earn the reader’s sympathy and affection. By the end you realise that the psychology of each and every one of them makes perfect sense, that their personal experiences and generations of history have subtly shaped who they became, and that this tapestry of lives is telling a much bigger story. Even the characters’ names – Milkman, Corinthians, Guitar, Pilate – seemingly so whimsical, are emblematic of profoundly important truths.

For the first half, I was unsure really what the thrust of the novel even was. If you had asked me what it’s about, the best I could have managed is ‘the story of a well-off, urban black family in 20th century America’. It meanders and ambles around, in ways that seem so unstructured as to be frustratingly messy and, beautifully written though it is, those early chapters lacked some sort of hook. Gradually though, it emerges that the family’s (relative) wealth has disconnected, alienated and trapped them; that their upward mobility, especially for the women, has limits; that each one of them is isolated and alone even while living all together under one roof.

This unrest reaches a tipping point which sets Milkman off on an odyssey that forms Part II of the novel. Ostensibly he is seeking material wealth, but what Milkman finds as he retraces the steps of his forebears is much richer and more valuable. Morrison pulls it all together so gradually that when a pattern and a structure finally emerge it almost feels accidental. But if you go back and re-read the early chapters, you realise that the threads and pathways were there all along. This is the kind of book that rewards patience, close reading, and (I expect) multiple re-reads. Powerful and immensely rewarding.

"On autumn nights, in some parts of the city, the wind from the lake brings a sweetish smell to shore … there was this heavy spice-sweet smell that made you think of the East and striped tents and the sha-sha-sha of leg bracelets. The people who lived near the lake hadn’t noticed the smell for a long time now because when air conditioners came, they shut their windows and slept a light surface sleep under the motor’s drone. So the ginger sugar blew unnoticed through the streets, around the trees, over roofs, until, thinned out and weakened a little, it reached Southside.”

Heavy. Toni Morrison writes some heavy words. They’re full with the weight of meanings and metaphors and woven together layer by layer with the magic of a master storyteller. My respect for her continues to grow, and I was under her spell until the last page of this novel. When I finished though, I felt a little strange, a little uneasy, as if she pulled back my awareness until it hurt a little more than I’d like.

Song of Solomon is a story about heritage. Milkman Dead is on a quest, and he’s helped and hindered by some of the most creative, eccentric, bizarre characters I have encountered in fiction. Pilate is my favorite. She chews on wood and makes moonshine. She wears an earring made from a snuffbox holding a piece of paper with her name on it. She keeps a green bag of human bones hanging from her ceiling. And she sings.

O Sugarman done fly away
Sugarman done gone
Sugarman cut across the sky
Sugarman gone home …

Singing and the idea of song is one of many themes in Song of Solomon. You see how singing carries power and magic and history. And, of course, heritage.

I believe in the magic of singing, both personally and collectively, because I’ve felt it. In songs we celebrate, we remember, we relive, which, come to think of it, can be why we read, too.

4,5⭐

"La canción de Salomón" fue galardonada con el premio National Critics Awards en 1978. Para mí fue mi segundo acercamiento a la autora, tras haber leído "Beloved". La crítica, sitúa a "Beloved" como superior desde el punto de vista de la excelencia literaria. A día de hoy, tras haber leído buena parte de su obra, no sabría con cuál de las dos quedarme.

Dice la sinopsis:
A medio camino entre la fantasía mítica y la cruda realidad de los guetos negros en los años 60, La canción de Salomón narra la historia de la familia Macon, un próspero hombre de negocios que ha tratado por todos los medios de ocultar sus orígenes y de integrarse en la sociedad blanca. Pese a todos sus esfuerzos, su hijo, al que todos llaman 'Lechero', porque fue amamantado por su madre durante mucho tiempo, decide tomar el camino opuesto. Lejos de rehuir a sus iguales como hizo su padre, el entra en un círculo de gente dispuesta a reaccionar contra la violencia blanca y emprende un viaje en busca de un fabuloso tesoro que habrá de conducirle a los orígenes de su raza.

Mis impresiones.

Lo primero que me gustaría señalar, especialmente para aquellos que se inicien en la obra de la autora con este título, es que la sinopsis, es y no es. Vamos a encontrarnos lo que anticipa, pero quizá no de la manera que esperamos. Todo el libro está impregnado de ese realismo mágico inscrito en el contexto de la negritud, que tan bien domina Morrison. Realismo simbólico y social, realidad y fantasía unidas en una especie de simbiosis que constituye parte de la magia de esta novela. Podrían citarse muchos ejemplos. Baste con uno.

"Pero cuando usted dice «levantó el vuelo» quiere decir simplemente que se fue, ¿no?, que escapó.
No, quiero decir que voló. Es una tontería, claro, pero según la historia no se marchó así como así. Se fue volando, como un pájaro. Un día estaba en el campo, se subió a un cerro, se dio un par de vueltas y salió volando. Volvió al lugar de donde había venido".

La trama argumental se construye en torno a la búsqueda de Lechero Muerto de los orígenes de su familia, que, durante tres generaciones arrastra un apellido que no les corresponde. El suyo, el auténtico se perdió por causas que el protagonista y su padre desconocen. La otra trama la constituye el racismo subyacente, que impregna la obra de principio a fin. La guerra racial, no es la trama principal, pero deviene a todo lo que los protagonistas hacen y son, han hecho y han sido. Un racismo latente que es causa y consecuencia en sí mismo.

"La tierra está empapada de sangre de negros y antes estaba empapada de sangre de indios".

¿Detenerlos? ¿Por qué? ¿Por haber matado a un negro? ¿De dónde dices que eres?

La forma en que la autora conecta todos los hilos de la historia es magistral. No la desarrolla de forma lineal. Es una trama compleja que se construye en varios planos. Tiene idas y venidas en el tiempo. Lo que un personaje cuenta en un momento dado, se confronta en otro sin dejar cabos sueltos, a medida que la novela avanza. Sin olvidarnos de la prosa de Morrison, que constituye una experiencia en sí misma. La expresión de las ideas, la construcción de los personajes, lo inciso de los diálogos. Está tan bien escrita que da gusto leerla.
Se divide en dos partes. La primera transcurre en un pueblo indeterminado de Michigan. Abarca la vida del protagonista hasta que cumple treinta y dos años. En la segunda, con la intención inicial de ir en busca de un tesoro, Lechero rastreará sus orígenes en Pensilvania y Virginia.

Los personajes, como me decía uno de mis compañeros en esta lectura (diecisiete añitos el niño), son raros y no lo son. A día de hoy sigue llamando la atención la separación de facto que hay entre las razas blanca y negra en EEUU. Dos razas y dos culturas diferentes. Tan cerca y tan lejos.

"Escúchame. La gente hace cosas muy raras. Sobre todo nosotros, los negros. Tenemos las peores bazas y para seguir vivos y participando en la partida, tenemos que hacer cosas muy extrañas. Cosas que no podemos evitar. Cosas que nos obligan a hacernos daño los unos a los otros. Ni siquiera sabemos por qué. Pero, óyeme, no lo lleves siempre dentro ni se lo pases a los demás. Trata de comprenderlo, pero si no puedes, olvídate de ello y hazte fuerte".

Dichos personajes encarnan los conflictos éticos presentes en el libro. Por un lado, tenemos a Macon Muerto padre. Ha asumido los valores de los blancos, que nunca le aceptarían y ha establecido distancia con los de su color. La ambición es su motor. Cree que el poder y la libertad que proporciona el dinero trasciende incluso la raza. Así se lo inculca a su hijo en un vano intento de que sea como él.

" Todo será tuyo. Todo, todo. Serás libre. El dinero da la libertad, Macon. Es la única forma auténtica de libertad que existe. Créeme".

Su hermana, Pilatos, representa la otra cara de la moneda. Valores marcados por la tradición. Vital, salvaje, sin estar sujeta a normas ni a posesiones materiales.

Guitarra, el amigo de Lechero, desencantado de una justicia que ignora a los de su raza, la busca por su cuenta de la peor manera posible, ojo por ojo, inocente por inocente. La postura de Lechero en este conflicto es la contraria. Le horroriza lo que su amigo hace y teme por él.

"No se corrige un error con otro error".

"Un asesino es un asesino, no importa cuáles sean sus motivos".

Macon, Lechero, Muerto vive al margen de su entorno. Egoísta, no pretende hacer daño, pero tampoco piensa en los demás. Su tía Pilatos y su amigo Guitarra son el catalizador que le lleva a reencontrarse con aquello de lo que su padre le ha mantenido alejado, a emprender un viaje en pos de sus raíces.

"Pero nada comparable con la inmensa vergüenza de ver y oír a Pilatos, no sólo por su actuación de la negrita sumisa y humillada, sino porque lo había hecho tan de buen grado por él, Lechero, por el hombre que acababa de salir de su casa llevándose a cuestas lo que ella consideraba su patrimonio... Había estado dispuesto a golpear a una anciana negra que le había ofrecido el primer huevo cocido perfecto que había comido en su vida, que le había mostrado el firmamento, azul como las cintas del sombrero de su madre, de modo que desde aquel día cada vez que miraba al cielo no sentía la distancia, la lejanía, sino que lo reconocía como algo íntimo, familiar, como el cuarto en que vivía, un lugar en que encajaba, al que correspondía. Le había contado cuentos, le había cantado canciones, le había alimentado de plátanos y bizcochos de maíz, y, cuando llegaba el frío, con sopa de nueces bien calentita. Y si su madre no mentía, esta anciana —cercana ya a los setenta, pero con la piel y la agilidad de una adolescente— le había traído al mundo cuando sólo un milagro podía conseguirlo. Fue aquella misma mujer, aquella a quien él hubiera golpeado hasta dejarla inconsciente, la que irrumpió en la comisaría y actuó ante los policías ofreciéndose indefensa a sus risas, a su piedad, a sus burlas, a su desprecio, a su incredulidad, a su odio, a su capricho, a su disgusto, a su poder, a su ira, a su aburrimiento… a todo lo que pudiera ser de utilidad para salvarle a él.

Los nombres son una parte importante en este libro. Nombres que dan testimonio, Lechero, Macon Muerto, Cantar Byrd, Agar, Pilatos, Primera epístola a los Corintios, calle de No Muerto. Y nombres que proporcionan identidad, Jake, Shalimar, Shalimon, Salomón.

"... Por algo Pilatos se había colgado el suyo de la oreja... Cuando sabes tu nombre tienes que defenderlo pues morirá contigo a menos que sea escrito y recordado"

Señalar, por último, el final, que conecta con el principio. Termina como empieza con el deseo de volar.

" ... ahora Lechero sabía lo que Shalimar había descubierto años atrás: que si te rindes al viento puedes cabalgar en él".

En conclusión. Una novela maravillosa escrita por una grande de la literatura contemporánea. Merece que se le dé una oportunidad. Más que recomendable.

DNF @ 9%

I was going to push myself to go on and try to read a couple more chapters but this really wasn't working for me :(

takes a while to settle into the rhythm and denseness of the text but once you surrender to it, ‘s so rewarding

Song of Solomon is a timeless classic and coming-of-age tale as told as only Toni Morrison can do in this moving and lyrical novel. I was so moved by the author's Forward to the book where she talks about the death of her father stressing that even in the grip of the unmanageable sadness and grief, that each of his four children was convinced that he loved him or her best by the gifts he shared with each throughout their lives, and how he spoke to each in the language only they understood. Toni Morrison says it best:

n  

"But it was the death of that girl--the one who lived in his head--that I mourned when he died. Even more than I mourned him, I suffered the loss of the person he thought I was, I think it was because I felt closer to him than to myself that, after his death, I deliberately sought his advice for writing the novel that continued to elude me. 'What are the men you have known really like?'

He answered.

Whatever it is called--muse, insight, inspiration, 'the dark finger that guides,' 'bright angel'--it exists and, in many forms, I have trusted it ever since."

n

And with that, Ms. Morrison tells us how she was guided to write this stunning novel from a male perspective. What I found magnificent was the use of flight throughout the novel, sometimes in a mythical and magical way, other times metaphorical. Following Macon "Milkman" Dead as he explores the roots of his family and how that history has impacted him was a lovely novel with beautiful and lyrical writing by one of our best contemporary authors.