Status Updates From Tar Baby

Lots of interpersonal relationships and things and it’s a very reserved book insofar as how much time and ground that has been covered since the prologue. Son is an interesting catalyst for the manor’s family. I pretty much end up loving every character as Morrison has painted such sympathetic portraits.

I honestly have no idea where this story is going outside of Jade and Son maybe getting together based on how a major part of the tale is how “white” Jade acts and thus her relationship with her “blackness” and it’s hit head on the moment that Son starts harassing her, telling her how a woman of African descent OUGHT to act. But we also have our first taste of the story’s compassion for him.

In a vague way I’m reminded of The Sundial but Morrison’s compassionate sketches of each of the characters, both the eccentric whites and the blacks who move around them, make this a compelling story for entirely different reasons. One of Jackson’s dark talents was in illustrating what to laugh at; Morrison highlights what to ache, what to cry for. Her humanism is not solely in revealing faults.