It’s been a few weeks since I read this book. I swore I would not get behind. And then the school year started, and it’s been way easier to read books than it is to write about them. Heck, I’m having a hard time balancing my grading and my own academic writing at the moment. Ah, well. No time like the present to start righting the ship, eh?
Home is Toni Morrison’s second-latest novel. I checked out the audiobook from the library, because she reads it, and because my experience with A Mercy was absolutely stellar. It chronicles the homecoming experience of Frank Money, an African-American Korean war veteran who has seen too much and has too little to live for. He comes to in a psychiatric hospital and decides he must leave. In his journey, he recalls the love that has broken him, and the letter from a medically abused younger sister that calls him home. The plot is deceptively simple, but it calls to the inner workings of our very beings—the need to find a home, even when the physical buildings and family units have collapsed around us.
While I was not mindblown, as with A Mercy, I did find Home very moving in its relationship of a brother and sister finding their way back home. Morrison excels in the inner psychology of her characters, and here, that strength really shines. Because the plot is so bare, the study in Frank’s and Cee’s lives make the novel worthwhile. I give this a solid four stars.
