Song of Solomon
Toni Morrison · 1977
A man discovers that his family carries a secret: a literal ability to fly. Morrison's richest novel in terms of myth, music, and the Black American oral tradition becomes a meditation on inheritance, masculinity, and the memory of slavery. Won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1977. Morrison at her most mythic.
The case against
Milkman's flight costs the women everything: Hagar dies of his indifference and the novel keeps moving, while Ruth and his sisters exist mainly to be escaped from. Part subject, part blind spot. He is unpleasant company for half the book before the quest catches, and the closing leap resolves nothing the novel raised.
Literary Fiction · the Pro canon
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
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