Home
Ratings8
Average rating3.4
15
Ratings8
Average rating3.4
America’s most celebrated novelist, Nobel Prize-winner Toni Morrison extends her profound take on our history with this twentieth-century tale of redemption: a taut and tortured story about one man’s desperate search for himself in a world disfigured by war.
Frank Money is an angry, self-loathing veteran of the Korean War who, after traumatic experiences on the front lines, finds himself back in racist America with more than just physical scars. His home may seem alien to him, but he is shocked out of his crippling apathy by the need to rescue his medically abused younger sister and take her back to the small Georgia town they come from and that he’s hated all his life. As Frank revisits his memories from childhood and the war that have left him questioning his sense of self, he discovers a profound courage he had thought he could never possess again.
A deeply moving novel about an apparently defeated man finding his manhood—and his home. -From Amazon.com
Reviews with the most likes.
Beautifully written and rather crushing with a sense that there was no other way these events could have unfolded.
Home by Toni Morrison is a real disappointment. I read A Mercy when it came out a couple of years ago and thought it was fantastic, on par with Morrison's masterpiece, Beloved. While Home has some powerful moments and extremely important subject matter, the language is indifferent and overall the story isn't fresh.
Frank “Smart” Money has returned from the Korean War, but he's a mess. We gradually learn that his two childhood friends Mike and Stuff died in the war, but his problems go beyond his mourning. He connects with a sweet woman, Lily, who is making her own way as a seamstress, but his problems are too much for him to take. He gets words that his sister Cee is dying and needs help, and so he heads home to Lotus, Georgia, running into his share of trouble along the way.
The one thing that makes the book stand out, and the only thing that could have saved it, is the reason for Cee's illness. Desperate for a job, she works for a Doctor who uses her to conduct experiments. This is explosive stuff, but Morrison makes it seem like a minor aspect of the novel, which mostly centers on Frank and his problems.
It's a very short book and fast read, though, so I'm still glad I read it.
One of my favorites so far of Morrison's work. Lovely and brutal, as her books generally are, with interesting and unique characters. Left me with a slightly dissatisfied feeling of wanting more
