Song of Solomon

About this book

Toni Morrisons Song of Solomon a novel of large beauty and power creates a magical world out of four generations of black life in America a world we enter on the day of the birth of Macon Dead Jr. (known as Milkman) son of the richest black family in a mid-western town; the day on which the lonely insurance man Robert Smith poised in blue silk wings attempts to fly from a steeple of the hospital a black Icarus looking homeward... We see Milkman growing up in his fathers money-haunted death-haunted house with his silent sisters and strangely passive mother beginning to move outward--through his profound love and combat with his friend Guitar...through Guitars mad and loving commitment to the secret avengers called the Seven Days...through Milkmans exotic imprisoning affair with his love-blind cousin Hagar...and through his unconscious apprenticeship to his mystical Aunt Pilate who saved his life before he was born. And we follow him as he strikes out alone; moving first toward adventure and then--as the unspoken truth about his family and his own buried heritage announces itself--toward an adventurous and crucial embrace of life. This is a novel that expresses with passion tenderness and a magnificence of language the mysterious primal essence of family bond and conflict the feelings and experience of all people wanting and striving to be alive.