Song of Solomon

1) "Downtown the firemen pulled on their greatcoats, but when they arrived at Mercy, Mr. Smith had seen the rose petals, heard the music, and leaped on into the air."

2) "'Yeah. Sweet Hagar. Wonder what her name is.' 'You just said it.' 'I mean her last name. Her daddy's name.' 'Ask Reba.' Guitar paid their bar bill and helped Milkman negotiate to the door. The wind had risen and cooled. Guitar flapped his elbows against the cold. 'Ask anybody but Reba,' said Milkman. 'Reba don't know her own last name.' 'Ask Pilate.' 'Yeah. I'll ask Pilate. Pilate knows. It's in that dumb-ass box hanging from her ear. Her own name and everybody else's. Bet mine's in there too. I'm gonna ask her what my name is. Say, you know how my old man's daddy got his name?' 'Uh uh. How?' 'Cracker gave it to him.' 'Sho'nough?' 'Yep. And he took it. Like a fuckin sheep. Somebody should have shot him.' 'What for? He was already Dead.'"

3) "She was the third beer. Not the first one, which the throat receives with almost tearful gratitude; nor the second, that confirms and extends the pleasure of the first. But the third, the one you drink because it's there, because it can't hurt, and because what difference does it make?"

4) "Here one lived knowing that at any time, anybody might do anything. Not wilderness where there was system, or the logic of lions, trees, toads, and birds, but wild wilderness where there was none."

5) "Just before dark, when the sun had left them alone, when they were coming out of some woods looking around for the crest of the hill where they could see, perhaps, a farm, an abandoned shed—anyplace where they could spend the night—they saw a cave, and at its mouth stood their father. This time he motioned for them to follow him."

6) "As soon as she closed the door she heard voices and instinctively touched her loose hair. The voices came from beyond the dining room, from behind the closed kitchen door. Men's voices. Corinthians blinked. She had just come from a house in which men sat in a lit kitchen talking in loud excited voices, only to meet an identical scene at home. She wondered if this part of the night, a part she was unfamiliar with, belonged, had always belonged, to men. If perhaps it was a secret hour in which men rose like giants from dragon's teeth and, while the women slept, clustered in their kitchens. On tiptoe she approached the door. Her father was speaking."

7) "'I went cause Papa told me to. He kept coming to see me, off and on. Tell me things to do. First he just told me to sing, to keep on singing. 'Sing,' he'd whisper. 'Sing, sing.' Then right after Reba was born he came and told me outright: 'You just can't fly on off and leave a body,' he tole me. A human life is precious. You shouldn't fly off and leave it. So I knew right away what he meant cause he was right there when we did it. He meant that if you take a life, then you own it. You responsible for it. You can't get rid of nobody by killing them. They still there, and they yours now. So I had to go back for it. And I did find the cave. And there he was. Some wolves or something must have drug it cause it was right in the mouth of the cave, laying up, sitting up almost, on that very rock we slept on. I put him in my sack, piece by piece. Some cloth was still on him, but his bones was clean and dry. I've had it every since. Papa told me to, and he was right, you know. You can't take a life and walk off and leave it. Life is life. Precious. And the dead you kill is yours.'"

8) "His manner, his clothes were reminders that they had no crops of their own and no land to speak of either. Just vegetable gardens, which the women took care of, and chickens and pigs that the children took care of. He was telling them that they weren't men, that they relied on women and children for their food. And that the lint and tobacco in their pants pockets where dollar bills should have been was the measure. That thin shoes and suits with vests and smooth smooth hands were the measure. That eyes that had seen big cities and the inside of airplanes were the measure. They had seen him watching their women and rubbing his fly as he stood on the steps. They had also seen him lock his car as soon as he got out of it in a place where there couldn't be more than two keys twenty-five miles around. He hadn't found them fit enough or good enough to want to know their names, and believed himself too good to tell them his. They looked at his skin and saw it was as black as theirs, but they knew he had the heart of the white men who came to pick them up in the trucks when they needed anonymous, faceless laborers."

I liked Beloved more than this one, but this was still really good (shocker!). There are some passages that really hit you, they’re so poetic or well expressed. I love when an author can bring precision to language like that.

The story itself felt a bit loose. It’s kind of a coming of age, but with sporadic chapters that veer from Milkman’s perspective. I’m okay with structure like that, but it could bother other readers.

This is the kind of story where you feel the themes, the motifs, but it takes some mulling over to decide what the story is saying and what it means to you. This is a story about names and family, feminism, class, race, etc. So much!

I think a theme that is clearest in my mind is class. It took me a little bit to grasp that Milkman and his family were doing relatively well for themselves, but I started to see those tensions. It resulted in some isolation for them. Milkman is pretty ignorant of poorer people’s problems and concerns because he is shielded from a lot of that and doesn’t even realize it. For his sisters it has meant incredibly lonely lives because as women their higher class lifestyle meant they had less freedom in many ways.

I enjoyed reading Milkman’s path toward more compassion and less self-absorption. I also appreciated that he did some irreparable damage. He can’t fix everything just because he understands better now. It’s too late for some things.

Favorite quotes:
Apparently he thought he deserved only to be loved--from a distance, though--and given what he wanted. And in return he would be...what? Pleasant? Generous? Maybe all he was really saying was: I am not responsible for your pain; share your happiness with me but not your unhappiness.

The calculated violence of a shark grew in her, and like every witch that ever rode a broom straight through the night to a ceremonial infanticide as thrilled by the black wind as by the rod between her legs; like every fed-up-to-the-teeth bride who worried about the consistency of the grits she threw at her husband as well as the potency of the lye she had stirred into them; and like every queen and every courtesan who was struck by the beauty of her emerald ring as she tipped its poison into the old red wine, Hagar was energized by the details of her mission.

Macon "Milkman" Dead (III.) isn't the most lovable main character one could encounter once he has grown into an adult, to say the least. Most of the other characters around him aren't, either, though, which Milkman feels keenly but never is interested in the why until very late in the book.
His only real friend Guitar is the one to get him into contact with his ousted aunt, his father's younger sister, and her daughter and granddaughter. And only there does he first hear about the history of his family before him being born as the son of a well-off property owner. From then on things around him seem to crumble and reveal new aspects of the world around him - some of the secrets confided to the unwilling Milkman are unpleasant and disturbing, and the feeling of being pushed about by others like a tool is what drives him on a wild goose chaise for gold and into the real past of his family, though away from his only friend. It all ends in a climax which leaves the reader speechless.

Along the lifeline of Milkman many subjects of Black American history are touched and discussed through various characters: the end of slavery (which didn't stop the discrimination and violence), the rise of a black middle class, the fight for equality in the middle of the twentieth century.
And along the traces of his family history, Milkman develops from a self-centered, aimless "crown prince" into a responsible adult able to recognize his own shortcomings.

The song of Solomon is weaved into the whole story, and turns up many times without the reader (or the characters) knowing the meaning. In the end, it is the answer to the riddle, though.