Guardian Newspaper 1000 Novels discussion

In March we will be reading Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison for our Family & Self category - who's in?

Probably not--I've actually got Sula in my immediate TBR pile, so I probably won't be ready for this one for a while yet.

I’ve started reading. Strangely my library only has this in ebook and not physical book form.

I read this about a year ago so I’m not ready for a reread, but I really liked it so I hope others feel the same.

I'm not sure I can get to it this month, but I will definitely try to get to it soon. It is sitting right here on my book shelf -- I've been meaning to get to it for awhile!

I'm in, but I won't start it until next week.

Just finished this beautiful and rich book. It's the first Toni Morrison I've read. I wasn't aware about the magical realism elements in her work, and I found it interesting how she combined it with the cultural legends and oral traditions of African American history. The book feels cohesive, with motifs and characters popping up again and again, and almost every mysterious detail in the first chapter turning out to be more important than expected.

I read the book a long time ago, and I look forward to rereading it before the month is over. With Toni Morrison, basically you can't go wrong.

What does Milkman mean by “a chubby”? (92)

Overall, I enjoyed the book but I didn't really understand the change in Milkman and Guitar's relationship in the last part of the story.

Sad to say I did not enjoy this book as much on re-reading it, years later, as I did the first time.

Yes, the writing is beautiful. Some turns of the phrase will stick with me forever, like "Magdalene called Lena" telling Milkman that his sisters' childhood was all spent on him like a found nickel. And yes, the book has a mythic quality to it: part personal quest to find out the lead character's own family history (and become a grown-up in the process), part meditation on the wish to escape from the history of slavery in the U.S. by flying away. For all those reasons, it will remain a classic.

But this is a story of severely damaged people, some of whom have good qualities, some of whom even evoke compassion, but none of whom I would want to spend a single afternoon with. It's also a story of sex, and the withholding of it, used perversely as a weapon. Thinking about this book and The Bluest Eye, I really hope they aren't based on Morrison's life experience. I really hope not.

I'm finding this book remarkably heavy going. Every time I put it down, it takes me ages to pick it back up again. I'm finding it hard to engage with the wafty "plot" and its seemingly freeform movement between characters and through chronology. Whichever book I happen to be reading alongside it appears more appealing - perhaps that's my trick - don't have another book being read alongside it.

Still struggling through this. I’m worried that it could be a DNF at this rate.

For me, this novel was a late save - for the entire first half I was finding it incredibly hard to get involved with the characters and the milieu. The narrative would jump around between characters and between times and between place and I could pin nothing down and I couldn't relate to the situation at all and many was the time that I considered just laying it aside and considering it a rare DNF.

But I stuck with it and it all changed for me when Hagar tried to kill Milkman - from then on the novel seemed to finally coalesce and come together and drive forwards as the three narrative strands of the one generation of Hagar, Guitar and Milkman became focussed. Milkman goes away initially to find gold but ultimately finds his own identity, while leaving behind lives he has unwittingly shattered.

So, I'm glad I finished it. It's satisfying when a novel can completely change the way I think about it this far through. Would I appreciate the first half more now that I have completed the book? Probably, but there are too many other novels to read to make it worthwhile.