Book Review #19 - Home

There are so many qualities of a book that determine its quality and how it is received.  Toni Morrison is a difficult author for me to review because I understand, as a middle-class, caucasian reader, I lack the experience, history and perspective that would allow me to truly love and appreciate her books.  However, having read four of her novels including her latest, Home, I can recognize the beauty of her craft by merely comparing a paragraph she writes to a paragraph in another book and, more often than not, declaring hers the winner.  She writes very well.  She writes with depth and truth and exposes a part of American and black history that is usually harrowing and shameful.

I never want to pretend to like a book more than I actually did in an attempt to seem more analytical or astute than I really am.  It is tempting while writing a review for a book written by a Nobel laureate to nod my head and say, "This is incredible!" but the main thought going through my head while reading Home was, "Why doesn't Morrison ever include the good things that happen to her characters?" I'm not insinuating that anyone who gushes over this book isn't being sincere but I know if I gushed, I wouldn't be.

Home is the story of Frank Money's post Korean war life.  There are plenty of flashbacks to his childhood which are all just as disturbing as his psychologically damaged adult life.  Although Frank seems to have had some decent times in his life, such as close friendships throughout his youth, a  somewhat understanding girlfriend after the war and a sister he raised who idolizes him, any positives are quickly glossed over to get straight to the dysfunction of each relationship and experience: his friends gruesome deaths in the war, his girlfriend's relief when he leaves and his poor sister's abuse at the hands of a medical doctor.

It's all very believable and I'm sure there are plenty of real life Frank Moneys who have suffered what he suffered and saw what he saw and were tormented every bit as much as he was tormented but it's all so...depressing.   I have never and will never think that a book needs a happy ending to be good but it should have a purpose.  I'm not sure what this book's purpose is.

The book jacket actually led me to believe that this would be a book about a broken man finding hope and courage and his "home" but I saw no hope or courage here.  Not curling up into a ball and dying: yes.  It just seems like an awfully low standard to write about.