Book Review: Home is Toni Morrison's penultimate novel, the story of an Odyssey across the breadth of the United States. Soldier Frank Money leaves behind a war in Korea, but carries with him the damage he suffered there. After serving he returns to his own country to travel through a different kind of war. He receives word that his beloved younger sister needs help and the journey home is long and difficult. A struggle through obstacles and obstructions built of segregation, bigotry, and hate. Along the way there are good and bad people, those that help and those that hurt. Writing in the restrained, but powerful voice she adopted in Love (2003), Morrison tells a story of pain, horror, of hell as here and home. But from the litany of torment, the heart of Home encompasses Morrison's message that we're in this together. As she argued in Paradise (1997), perfection can't be reached by exclusion. We're all trying to make a home so it must be a home for all. We need to share equally in the community, we're all more alike than we are different. If anyone should be excluded, it's haters, bigots, and those so full of anger they can't live with others. Or more Biblically, those who can't love their neighbor, all their neighbors. As Morrison once said, "None of us is alone; each of us is dependent on others." Even if we really want to, we can't go it alone. In Home, Toni Morrison's simple and softer writing makes this theme even more powerful, There's no distracting from her message with gaudy writing. A smaller book on the outside, less famous and uncommon, but her themes and meaning are as large as ever. [4★]
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