Home

by Toni Morrison

Hardcover, 2012

Call number

FIC MOR

Collection

Publication

Knopf (2012), Edition: First Edition, 160 pages

Description

"The story of a Korean war veteran on a quest to save his younger sister"--

Media reviews

Like a Toni Morrison primer, Home is a compression of many of the Nobel laureate’s perennial themes of memory, love and loss, uprooting and homecoming. Morrison’s characters struggle to overcome disturbing inner rhythms, caught between trying to exist freely in the world and being captivated by
Show More
internal demons.... Home does not have the grand, sweeping narrative of Morrison’s best fiction. The story’s many brutal acts... are placed before the reader with so little fanfare as to detract from their power. The book is also much more linguistically subdued than most of her work, and her grand themes of redemption, homecoming, and self-ownership do not work best on a small scale. Still, slice it anywhere and you will find striking moments, dialogue that sings with life, and the mythic American landscape and its people surviving within it.
Show Less
2 more
“Home” is unusual, not only in that it features a male protagonist but that it’s so fiercely focused on the problem of manhood. The novel opens with a childhood memory of horses that “stood like men.” And as Money makes his way across the country to rescue his sister, he’s haunted by
Show More
what it means to be a man. “Who am I without her,” he wonders, “that underfed girl with the sad, waiting eyes?” Are acts of violence essentially masculine, or are they an abdication of manliness? Is it possible, the novel finally asks, to consider the manhood implicit in sacrifice, in laying down one’s life? What Money eventually does to help his sister and to quiet his demons is just as surprising and quietly profound as everything else in this novel. Despite all the old horrors that Morrison faces in these pages with weary recognition, “Home” is a daringly hopeful story about the possibility of healing — or at least surviving in a shadow of peace.
Show Less
[I]f Morrison had finished writing the novel she so carefully began, it might have been one of her best in years. But at well under 200 pages with wide margins, Home barely begins before it ends.... Home should be relentless, unsparing, but Morrison relents halfway through, and spares everyone
Show More
– most of all herself.
Show Less

User reviews

LibraryThing member writestuff
Weeks later, when her baby, delivered on a mattress in Reverend Baily’s church basement, turned out to be a girl, mama named her Ycidra, taking care to pronounce all three syllables. Of course, she waited the nine days before naming, lest death notice fresh life and eat it. Everybody but Mama
Show More
calls her “Cee.” I always thought it was nice, how she thought about the nae, treasured it. As for me, no such memories. I am named Frank after my father’s brother. Luther is my father’s name, Ida my mother’s. The crazy part is our last name. Money. Of which we had none. - from Home, page 40 -

Frank Money has returned from the Korean War with anger, regret, guilt and the need for redemption. He arrives back in an America where racism is still dividing the country. As he travels to his hometown of Lotus, Georgia to rescue his little sister from an abusive situation, he remembers scenes from his childhood. His memory of Lotus is not a good one and he does not think of the place as home.

Lotus, Georgia, is the worst place in the world, worse than any battlefield. At least on the field there is a goal, excitement, daring, and some chance of winning along with many chances of losing. Death is a sure thing but life is just as certain. Problem is you can’t know in advance. – from Home, page 83 -

But, what Frank finds in Lotus is not just a sister in need, but something less tangible that binds him to the place. Deep in the south he finds himself immersed in the rich African-American culture and reconnecting to the people who are there to carry him forward.

Toni Morrison’s newest novel explores the scars of war (both physical and emotional), the depths of grief and regret, and the road to recovery. Morrison does not spare the reader the ugliness of racism in the mid-century south, a blight on American life which robbed people of their dignity and freedoms. She also touches on the medical experimentation which impacted black women during that time – something I had very little knowledge of until I read this novel. I researched this topic after reading Home and found this article which notes:

In the US South, throughout the the 1960s and 1970s, federally funded welfare state programs underwrote the coercive sterilization of thousands of poor black women. Under threat of termination of welfare benefits or denial of medical care, many black women “consented” to sterilization procedures. Within southern black communities knowledge of the routine imposition of non-consensual and medically-unnecessary sterilization on black women was well known – a practice so common it came to be known as a “Mississippi appendectomy.” (Roberts 2000)

Home is a sparse book (less than 150 pages) which packs a big punch. Morrison’s writing is poetic, rich, and character-driven. She makes a huge impact on the reader with very few words – one reason, I believe, she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993.

Readers who appreciate literary fiction will want to read Home, a novel about a man who must return to his past in order to move forward into his future.

Recommended.
Show Less
LibraryThing member chrisblocker
Toni Morrison is master of the English language. It doesn't matter if she's talking about flowers, or shoes, or syphilis, there is a rhythm to her words that feeds beautifully from one sentence to the next. It's that thing called “flow” students of creative writing are taught, the same flow
Show More
instructors of creative writing have difficulty teaching. If I were a teacher of creative writing, and a student asked me to explain flow, I'd open up any Morrison novel to a random page of narrative and begin reading aloud. I'd ask the class to pay close attention to the placing of each noun and verb, the structure of one sentence and the next, the choice and sound of each word. I imagine it is an experience to hear Morrison read aloud.

Morrison is also a very talented storyteller, when she has a story to tell. I've heard it said that she ran out of stories in the late 1980s (the Nobel curse, some say). I'm not sure if this is true or not, but I do feel that of the handful of Morrison novels I have read, the most memorable were those from the first half of her career. Her newer works are still brilliant in their language, but as I walk away from them, I feel as if I've read a beautiful collection of poetry that offered no lasting imagery.

Home is such a work, however a clear step up from the previous A Mercy, a novel so thin on story it is forgotten before one can return the book to the shelf. The chronology and perspectives of Home are presented in a way which capitalizes on the language but doesn't do as much for the story. Nevertheless, there is a story here, still thin but recognizable, memorable and slightly haunting.

Before I return to any of Morrison's post-Beloved titles, I believe I'll explore her entire catalog of the 70s and 80s. I like both storytelling-Morrison and linguistic-Morrison, but most days I'd take a good story over a beautifully crafted drawn-out vignette.
Show Less
LibraryThing member SamSattler
I have frequently heard Toni Morrison's new novel, Home, described as her most "accessible" work yet, and as someone who has read bits and pieces of several of Ms. Morrison's novels without up to now completing one of them, I have to agree with that assessment. Granted, Home, is hardly more than
Show More
novella length and it can be finished in one sitting or two, but its theme and underlying message are still pure Toni Morrison. This one just might serve as the gateway novel that creates a number of new, previously reluctant, Toni Morrison fans.

Home is largely Frank Money's story. Frank, a veteran of the recently ended Korean War, cannot face going home to his family. His two best friends from back home are dead, and Frank feels too much guilt about being the only one of the three to have survived ever to look their grieving mothers in the eyes. That guilt, topped off by misgivings about something he did in Korea, have turned Frank into a drunkard largely dependent upon the kindness of strangers for his survival. Frank Money is a bitter man, one growing ever more bitter because he knows that the country he risked his life for, and for which so many black men died, is every bit as racist as it was the day he left for Korea.

As children, Frank and his sister, Cee, could not wait to leave their sleepy little Georgia town for what they were certain would be better lives than the ones they would leave behind. Both did leave that little town - and both barely survived the results. Frank was scarred by war; the inexperienced Cee, by the disastrous marriage she jumped into in order to fashion her own escape. When, desperate to save her life, Frank decides to bring his sister back to the old hometown, the healing will begin for both of them.

For the most part, Morrison uses first person narration to tell Frank’s story, and although the book's chapters alternate between narrators, Frank's is the point-of-view most often heard from. Particularly interesting, is the way that Morrison occasionally allows Frank to step out of character long enough to address the book's author and readers directly, reminding us that this is a mature man telling a story that happened long ago. He even corrects some of what the author wrote in earlier chapters - admitting that he purposely mislead her about certain events from his past. In this manner, the truth of Frank's story is revealed layer-by-layer, until the reader has a clear sense of who he is and how he got to be the way he is.

Home is a story of one man's hard-earned redemption and how he finally found the home he had been searching for all his life. There is a lot going on between the covers of this slim book, and it should not be prejudged by its length - because it would be a shame to miss it.

Rated at: 4.0
Show Less
LibraryThing member Perednia
Home, Toni Morrison's latest novel, is about both a haven and the forgotten. Frank Money is the only one of three childhood friends to survive their battles in Korea. Back in the States, Frank is battling demons and survivor guilt. He's always been the strong one, taking care of his little sister
Show More
Cee. Now he needs help from others to try to make it back to her when he hears that she is near death and needs to be rescued.

His journey back to being the kind of man who can rescue his sister is both physical and spiritual. Frank travels a reverse Underground Railroad, finding refuge at a church after waking up in a mental hospital and escaping. As he travels home, the reader learns of how he and Cee grew up, how she got out of a backwoods place smaller than a town and where she ended up. Also revealed is how Frank has been fighting to hold on and not give up, but his war was hardly a good one. He is the only one who survived. And for what?

Morrison's short novel is tightly written, weaving in and out of points along the plot, themes, tropes and characters. It is a marvel to be studied and wondered at. But it also is a moving story of how African-Americans have been treated in their own country and how these individual characters react to what other people do to them. Frank and Cee have been victimized but are not victims.

After serving his country, Frank doesn't have anything except a medal. It's the only thing that keeps him from being arrested for the crime of being on the street and black. Cee thinks she has found the most wonderful employer in the world, but the white doctor she works for is killing her with his eugenics study. That the horror of what this "big-hearted doctor" named Beauregard is doing to Cee is not spelled out does not make it any less terrifying. The realization that the kind of thinking demonstrated by this ultimately cowardly man flourishes still today is even more terrifying, just as knowing the casual bigotry Frank encounters from white cops is seen is today's "stop and frisk" is, at best, disheartening.

Frank drank and found a strong woman to use as an anchor for a time. She is both similar to and the opposite of the grandmother who took in Frank, Cee, their parents and an uncle when they were forced to flee Texas (Cee was born on the road).

That grandmother, Lenore, is cold and cruel. Her active dislike of Cee is one of the reasons they both fled Lotus, Georgia, as soon as they could -- Frank to the Army and Cee running off with the first half-way grown man who wanted her. Lenore is like Miss Havisham without an Estrella to control and mentally abuse. She resents that she was able to use the money raised from selling her late husband's filling station (he was murdered, guilty of the crime of being black) but, instead of enjoying her life, she had to open her home to the family of her second husband. In contrast, Frank seeks shelter for a spell with Lily, a woman who has scrimped and saved enough to dream of owning a home and a business. When Frank leaves, she doesn't regret his going but there is not the sense that she resented the time she spent opening her heart and home to him. She just has other, better things to do now.

Many small actions reveal the true nature of the characters involved in the lives of Frank and Cee. These moments are powerful, and far more revealing, than the work of many authors who take pages and pages of tell, not show, to portray characters. The portraits work as individual portrayals, but they also combine to show the scope of what people can be capable of doing.

And, as with much of Morrison's work, there are ghosts. The first is one Frank sees on the train while trying to get home to Cee. It's a man in a zoot suit. A later appearance tells the reader that Frank is truly starting to heal. His physical journey has ended, but there is the implication his spiritual journey will continue. The quiet healing that takes place after the climax of the plot's action may leave some readers expecting more. But I thought it wasn't needed. Morrison was interviewed by Charlie Rose on the CBS morning program earlier this year and acknowledged she is stripping her fiction down as much as she can. A revelation late in the novel, and the way the last sections fit in tightly with the beginning, make more unnecessary.

Another ghostly figure that appears is Frank himself. Most of the novel is told in third-person omniscient. Frank at one point addresses that narrator. So when the revelation occurs, it's could be considered a surprise or, instead, the harvest of a seed planted in that passage. Frank, addressing the narrator, puts a different spin on an event that happened when the train stopped. A couple got off the train and came back bloodied. According to the narrative, the woman will be beat up by the man later because she shamed him for coming to his rescue. But Frank says differently:

Earlier you wrote about how sure I was that the beat-up man on the train to Chicago would turn around when they got home and whip the wife who tried to help him. Not true. I didn't think any such thing. What I thought was how he was proud of her but didn't want to show how proud he was to the other men on the train. I don't think you know much about love.

Or me.

As an example of how Morrison weaves so many things together, at another stage of his train journey Frank gets off the train for a walk and sees two women fighting while a man, presumably a pimp, watches them. He attacks the man and the women are angry about that. A person in power forcing others to fight comes up again in the story, and is tied to the way that Frank has always tried to protect Cee.

Throughout this tight story, Morrison remembers the forgotten. There are vets like Frank, himself a decorated veteran of that most forgotten of wars, Korea. There are victims of eugenics and other experiments undertaken on African-Americans without their knowledge or informed consent. There are domestic workers. There are ignored children. There are women alone. There are tiny, tiny towns where work is the only thing that matters. Morrison gives all of them a voice. And it's one that often is poetic. Frank's description of Lotus (a name with its own conotations of time spent outside regular time), does more in two pages to bring to life the dull hopelessness of a dead-end existence:

If not for my two friends I would have suffocated by the time I was twelve. They, along with my little sister, kept the indifference of parents and the hatefulness of grandparents an afterthought. Nobody in Lotus knew anything or wanted to learn anything. Nobody in Lotus knew anything or wanted to learn anything. It sure didn't look like anyplace you'd want to be. Maybe a hundred or so people living in some fifty spread-out rickety houses. Nothing to do but mindless work in fields you didn't own, couldn't own, and wouldn't own if you had any other choice. ... Could marbles, fishing, baseball, and shooting rabbits be reasons to get out of bed in the morning? You know it wasn't.

The contrast in attitude about work between Frank as a young boy and the women of Lotus is markedly different:

There was no excess in their gardens because they shared everything. There was no trash or garbage in their homes because they had a use for everything. They took responsibility for their lives and for whatever, whoever else needed them. The absence of common sense irritated but did not surprise them. Laziness was more than intolerable to them; it was inhuman. Whether you were in the field, the house, your own backyard, you had to be busy. Sleep was not for dreaming; it was for gathering strength for the coming day. ... Mourning was helpful but God was better and they did not want to meet their Maker and have to explain a wasteful life. They knew He would ask each of them one question: "What have you done?"

This underlying belief is the foundation of what will heal Frank and Cee. As Cee is told by one of the wise women:

Look to yourself. You free. Nothing and nobody is obliged to save you but you. Seed your own land. You young and a woman and there's serious limitations in both, but you a person too. Don't let Lenore or some trifling boyfriend and certainly no devil doctor decide who you are. That's slavery. Somewhere inside you is that free person I'm talking about. Locate her and let her do some good in the world.

The search for home in this novel shows there is the potential to do some good in the world, even by those who have been broken and who have been ignored or forgotten. Morrison does not have to spell out what that good will be, but showing the first steps Cee and Frank take toward doing their good as they heal makes for a strong argument that the wise woman of Lotus is right.
Show Less
LibraryThing member lauralkeet
In Home, Toni Morrison tells the story of Frank Money, a Korean War veteran who embarks on an odyssey to rescue his sister Cee from a bad situation. Frank suffers from PTSD and severe guilt at having survived the war when his childhood friends did not. He has yet to reconnect with his family
Show More
despite having always felt close to Cee. But then he receives a mysterious letter informing him Cee is in danger, and he is compelled to track her down.

As Frank makes his way towards Cee, his memories shed light on his experiences during the war. And at the same time, readers learn more of Cee’s story. Cee had run off with a ne'er-do-well to escape oppressive small-town family life, and when that relationship failed found work with a doctor who practiced eugenics. She naively submitted to his “treatments,” with disastrous consequences.

Reading Morrison’s fiction usually requires a certain willingness to go with the flow until I figure out what’s going on. But Home’s narrative is straightforward, almost mainstream in its approach. Cee’s situation was resolved in a way that was a bit too tidy. But I found her recovery, as well as Frank’s, sufficiently moving to warrant a 4-star rating.
Show Less
LibraryThing member pinkcrayon99
“Look to yourself. You free. Nothing and nobody is obliged to save you but you.”

Frank Money is grappling with “normal life” after returning home from the Korean War. Morrison opens the story Frank having one of his many flashbacks from his childhood. The flashback happens while he is in
Show More
restraints in a mental hospital. The war zone has basically made Frank a wanderer. While in a brief relationship with an ambitious young woman, Lily, Frank gets a cryptic message from his sister that sends him on a trip to try and rescue her before it is too late.

“Frank alone valued her. While his devotion shielded her, it did not strengthen her.”

Frank and Ycidra “Cee” Money were the type of siblings that had that unconditional, mountain moving devotion. Their parents were present physically but not emotionally. A brief stay with a mean grandmother proved to have a lasting effect on them both. So they grew to only depend on each other. While Frank was in Korea, he lost his two best friends as casualties of war. Cee got married and moved to Atlanta. Cee’s husband ran off and returning to Lotus was not an option for her. When Cee landed a job as a doctor’s assistant with free room and board she was pretty sure it was a good, safe place. This doctor practiced “eugenics” which Cee didn’t understand much about. The doctor’s experimentation on Cee brought Frank back to her and sent them both to Lotus a place they both vowed to never return. It was in Lotus that they found the healing and strength to go on.

When I realized I had been chosen to be receive an ARC of Toni Morrison’s latest novel, I was ecstatic. There is a lot of Toni’s “invisible ink” in Home. Overall, I would say that the story was steady and reminded me of, Song of Solomon. Initially the story was pretty captivating then it leveled off. Home had a lot of heart but not much depth.
Show Less
LibraryThing member Sullywriter
Powerful, painful, and moving.
LibraryThing member MarkMeg
"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, broken, veteran of the Korean War, who, after traumatic experiences on the frint lines, find himself back in racist America with more
Show 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 takes her back to the small Georgia town, Lotus, they come from, and that he has 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 posess again." Marveloud description, racicism at its worst--dlearly delineated. At the end Frank and Cee Cee bury bones in the first quilt she has made--as a free thinking woman. Whose bones? At first I thought they were his friends who died in the war, but I don't know.
Show Less
LibraryThing member Schatje
Frank Money, a Korean War vet, returns home, suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. He does not want to return to his hometown of Lotus, Georgia, but he has no choice when he learns that his sister Cee is very ill. As he travels back, the reader learns Frank’s history, how he had always
Show More
been his sister’s protector, and how he enlisted to escape the stifling atmosphere of Lotus.

Most of the book is narrated from the third person omniscient point of view, some focusing on other characters besides Frank, but the insertion of first person dramatic monologues from Frank’s viewpoint are the most revealing.

As would be expected from Morrison, the book is about racism, this time in the period between just before the end of Jim Crow and the beginning of the Civil Rights movement. Frank is a war veteran but that doesn’t guarantee him equal treatment, even in the Northern states through which he travels.

The novel follows the classic structure of the hero’s journey. Frank leaves home, undergoes trials, gains self-knowledge through his experiences, and returns home a changed person. Frank thinks about his sister who “could know the truth, accept it,” and in the end he does that too: he accepts the truth about his heart of darkness revealed in Korea. When he returns to Lotus, his attitude has changed: “he could not believe how much he had once hated this place. Now it seemed fresh and ancient, safe and demanding.” It is as if he recognizes the symbolism of the town’s name: though its roots are usually found in the muck at the bottom of ponds, it is a beautiful flower.

In some ways the book seems an indictment of medicine as practised by men. Cee recovers because the women in her community use traditional healing practices which are sharply contrasted with patriarchal medicine epitomized by a Dr. Scott who uses women for his experiments in eugenics. “Those women with seen-it-all eyes” are the ones who “repair what an educated bandit doctor had plundered.” Frank isn’t even allowed to visit his sister because the women believe “his maleness would worsen her condition.” Cee is healed not just physically, but spiritually as well: “They delivered unto him a Cee who would never again need his hand over her eyes or his arms to stop her murmuring bones.” I love books with strong female characters, but I found the portrayal of these healers too sanctifying.

This sanctification continues with Cee. As the younger sibling, she was always the one whom Frank rescued, and he does save her from the clutches of Dr. Scott. However, Cee, after her recovery is determined that “she wanted to be the person who would never again need rescue. . . . she wanted to be the one who rescued. . . “Ironically it is her older brother whom she recues by showing him that she “was gutted, infertile, but not beaten” and he need not be either.

In the end, both Cee and Frank are like a sweet bay tree which is described as “split down the middle, beheaded, undead – spreading its arms, one to the right, one to the left.” “It looked so strong/So beautiful/Hurt right down the middle/But alive and well.” It is this affirmation of human strength in the midst of suffering that is the strongest reason to read this book.
Show Less
LibraryThing member peggygillman
Much like The Pairs Wife, I wasn’t thrilled by this book until the end. It was a little bit of a surprise ending as we find out that the soldier who killed the little Korean girl was our hero. And the sister became a bastion of strength. This was a good little book. 6/15/12
LibraryThing member elsyd
Better a short story in a magazine than a book. Cee's story, while the most interesting is left undeveloped.
LibraryThing member tangledthread
Toni Morrison's newest book, Home, is a beautifully written story about a sister and brother growing up in Jim Crow south. Frank Money is a Korean war veteran suffering from post-traumatic stress. His sister, Cee, has suffered trauma of her own. Together they find home, and healing.
LibraryThing member mojomomma
Frank overcomes the demons of his Korean War service to journey back to Georgia to rescue his sister from the eugenics doctor that employs her. Then he faces some of the demons from their impoverished childhood in Lotus, Georgia.
LibraryThing member porch_reader
Frank Money is a veteran of the Korean War. He arrives back in the US with the horrors of war fresh in his mind and is confronted by the prejudices faced by African Americans. It is against both of these demons that he struggles as he attempts to find his place. Although the story is told from an
Show More
omniscient third-person perspective, short chapters told from Frank's first-person perspective are interspersed throughout the book. This technique, along with Morrison's ability to concisely convey emotions, results in a stark and compelling psychological and sociological study.

In contrast to a trend toward lengthy books that might benefit from editing, each word in Home serves a purpose and carries its weight. These sentences alone, describing Frank's hometown of Lotus, are worth the "price of admission":

"It was so bright, brighter than he remembered. The sun, having sucked away the blue from the sky, loitered there in a white heaven, menacing Lotus, torturing its landscape, but failing, failing, constantly failing to silence it: children still laughed, ran, shouted their games; women sang in their backyards while pinning wet sheets on clotheslines; occasionally a soprano was joined by a neighboring alto or a tenor just passing by. "Take me to the water. Take me to the water. Take me to the water. To be baptized."
Show Less
LibraryThing member c.archer
This was an incredibly beautiful but so painful story of an African American brother and sister (Frank and Cee), who grew up in the 50's. Their parents were basically forced from their home in Texas and left to move their family back home to Georgia where they move in with Grandpa and his resentful
Show More
and selfish wife. The children are raised in poverty and without a speck of sentiment or kindness since their parents are working continuously to try to make ends meet. The only thing they have is each other. That tie is a strong one the later moves Frank to return, post-Korea, to the home that he has no desire to ever see again to save his sister.
Ms. Morrison writes of loss, both of persons and self, and redemption. She uses no spare words, and because of that each sentence holds much meaning. Home is a quick read that will stay with me for a long time.
Show Less
LibraryThing member janeajones
I wanted to start the year's reading on a high note, so I decided to read Morrison's latest book. It fit the bill -- spare, profound, humane. Morrison's recent books don't have the rich and lush descriptions of Song of Solomon or Beloved, but their resonance continues to ring deeply as she reveals
Show More
the heart of the American experience.
Show Less
LibraryThing member WeeziesBooks
“Home” by Toni Morrison was a short book and easy to follow. It tells the story of Frank Money, his sister Cee and the lives they led as black Americans living in the South during very difficult times. Frank has always taken care of his sister from childhood, throughout the fleeing from Texas
Show More
to their grandmother’s house until he is sent to fight in Korea. He returns a different person as many do after the terrors of war, but he still tries to save is sister again but there is an overarching question for me of who really needed saving. The characters in the book are very good, but it is a story with many sub plots for a short novel and connecting with the characters was difficult. It is a story of survival, discrimination, family and relationships. I give it a 3 star rating.
Show Less
LibraryThing member glichman
Another home run by Toni Morrison. In one short novel, so much is dealt with: PTSD, race issues, loss of loved ones, sexuality, and more.
LibraryThing member rmckeown
Toni Morrison has written ten novels, and while Sula, the story of two friends raised together, who take wildly different paths toward womanhood, remains my favorite, reading a Toni Morrison novel is always an interesting and thoroughly entertaining experience. She has received the National Book
Show More
Critics Circle Award, a Pulitzer Prize, and in 1993, she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Home is her tenth novel.

Frank Money has returned from the Korean War physically and psychologically damaged. To make matters worse, he returns to an America in the depths of the Jim Crow era, with lynchings and cross burnings. The murder of Emmett Till, and the bold stand by Rosa Parks were still in the future. He returns to his home, but finds it oddly strange – he barely recognizes once familiar people and places. He finds his younger sister suffering from medical abuse, and tries to rescue her. In order to do that, he must return to the Georgia town he hated all his life.

Morrison describes Frank’s train ride home from Portland, Oregon. She writes, “Passing through freezing, poorly washed scenery, Frank tried to redecorate it, mind painting giant slashes of purple and X’s of gold on hills, dripping yellow and green on barren wheat fields. Hours of trying and failing to recolor the western landscape agitated him, but by the time he stepped off the train he was calm enough. The station noise was so abrasive, though, that he reached for a sidearm. None was there of course, so he leaned against a steel support until the panic died down” (27).

Clearly, Frank suffered from what we now recognize as PTSD. However in 1952, Frank was unlikely to get help from the government, and he certainly was not likely to find any help or support in the community at large. Frank goes on a shopping trip for some new clothes with Billy. They buy Frank a suit at Goodwill, then head to a shoe store for work boots. When they come out of the store, they walk into some police activity. Morrison writes, “…during the random search outside the shoe store they just patted pockets, not the inside of work boots. Of the two other men facing the wall, one had his switchblade confiscated, the other a dollar bill. All four lay their hands on the hood of the patrol car parked at the curb. The younger officer noticed Frank’s medal. // ‘Korea?’ // ‘Yes, sir.’ // ‘Hey, Dick. They’re vets.’ // ‘Yeah?’ // ‘Yeah. Look.’ The officer pointed to Frank’s service medal. // ‘Go on. Get lost, pal.’ // The police incident was not worth comment so Frank and Billy walked off in silence” (37). Sounds a lot like the recently discontinued New York City policy of “stop and frisk.”

Will Frank rediscover the courage he had in Korea? If you have not read Morrison in a while, Home, at a mere 145 pages will reintroduce the reader to this though-provoking, powerful writer. If you have not read anything by one of America’s great literary treasures – tsk, tsk – Home is a great place to start. 5 stars

--Jim, 4/14/14
Show Less
LibraryThing member Paulagraph
Classic Morrison. Prose here particularly spare. Of her previous novels, reminded me most of Jazz.
Hard but hopeful?
LibraryThing member mdbrady
Another amazing novel by an amazing author.

Toni Morrison’s latest book is a small gem. Its plot is simple and unremarkable, and the book is one of her most accessible novels. A Korean War vet, broken by his experiences at war, heads home to Georgia where his sister, wounded closer to home, is
Show More
near death. What makes the novel remarkable is the magic Morrison performs with words. I don’t have the words to explain how she does it. All I can do is share my awe at her achievement.

Read more at my blog: mdbrady.wordpress.com
Show Less
LibraryThing member idiotgirl
Particularly liked this book being read by Toni Morrison (pushed to the 4). Soft, deep, quiet voice. Very nice for the first person male. Made me think about it being a book by a woman, even as I read.
LibraryThing member Helenliz
This isn't a very long book, and it isn;t very hard to read, but it packs a punch - but it is surprisingly hard to put a finger on exactly why that is. Frank & Cee are brother & sister in the south. He escapes the deadbeat town by heading off to the Army and Korea. Cee gets into all sorts of
Show More
scrapes, having always had her bog brother to look after her, she heads straight off the rails without him and ends up in a bit of a pickle.
Cee's problem gets to Frank by a letter and he duly turns up to save her. But this time he can't out it right on his own and so they return to the small town that he hated so much. As time has passed, his experience of the town is much altered, and both of them show a sense of growth as people and the relationship between them changes. There is not a great deal of information in here, and you don't always know what is happening, or that what you do hear is the truth. But it is a compelling read.
Show Less
LibraryThing member gvenezia
A bit disappointed with this one. Morrison's natural talent for story-telling carries the novel, but there is a noticeable lack of depth and beautiful prose. Probably my least favorite of Morrison's, although I did enjoy the story and thought there was potential, just that the supports of the story
Show More
(prose, diction, symbolism, syntax) did not form the rooted, steady foundation found in most of Morrison's work.
Show Less
LibraryThing member AAPremlall
Incredibly touching story, especially right now with the racial tension in America. It touches on many aspects of enslavement and how despite being uprooted, one still finds home in their roots. I have to admit, I absolutely loved the compost and integrated pest management mentions.

Pages

160

ISBN

0307594165 / 9780307594167
Page: 1.4513 seconds