SONG OF SOLOMON, THE ISLAND OF SEA WOMEN AND THE WATER DANCER

Today I have some actual reviews for you. I hope you still like my new method of mini-reviews. These are three of the best novels I have read lately.

I reread this for one of my reading groups. It is Toni Morrison's third novel and her first time writing from a male point of view.

Milkman, the main character, takes a long time to come of age. His parents had a marriage of deep conflicts and his mother nursed him for many years. Hence his nickname. When his parents each tell him their separate sides of the story, he goes off to find out the truth of his family roots. He is looking for reasons and he finds plenty.

In addition to getting a deeper understanding of the novel from my second reading, I got a renewed purpose to tell my own story. If someday my sons read it, at least they will know how it was for me and how their childhoods became so crazy. At the end, Milkman flies! 

In another reading group pick, Lisa See sets her latest novel on a Korean island and reveals the lives of women divers, called haenyeo, from 1938 to 2008. These women supported their families by reaping from the sea the marine creatures that fed them and brought in income.

She explores her favorite topic: friendship between women. She also gives a history lesson about Korea from the days of Japanese colonization through the Korean War and up to the 21st century.

The women lived a matrifocal life: they worked in the sea and in their own fields, having numerous children who were cared for by their husbands while they dived. They also suffered great loss as political changes on the island led to mass killings that included many of their children, husbands and friends.

Through her meticulous and voluminous research Lisa See does her usual excellent job of making a foreign culture come to life while delving into the deep griefs and guilt that left her main character almost psychologically destroyed. Yet this woman had strengths beyond anything I could even imagine.

My reading groups brought me the best books this month. The Water Dancer is truly amazing! I already knew Ta-Nehisi Coates to be a perceptive writer who can expose hard truths with equal parts fact and emotion. In his first work of fiction he tells the story of the early Abolition movement, the Underground Railroad, and Harriet Tubman, all through the eyes and voice of a slave in Virginia.

It, like Song of Solomon, is a coming of age tale as well as a treatise on how lost memories being recovered can change a man, a woman, a child, an entire people. The parallels between this novel, Toni Morrison's book and Colson Whitehead's The Underground Railroad, are of course many. 

Hiram Walker, son of his enslaved mother and his plantation master father, falls into a special power called Conduction. Harriet Tubman also had that power and helped Hiram develop his own. In doing so, he finds his history, his purpose and his strengths.

I had to pay close attention as I read. Hard to do because the story is so gripping and the writing so vivid that all I wanted to do was turn the pages as fast as I could. 

Have you read any great books lately? I can recommend each of the above if you have not already read them.