Book 10: Home by Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison’s Home is a slight novel, barely 150 pages, but its size is deceptive. It is powerful story about redemption and forgiveness.

The story is told piecemeal by four narrators. The first narrator is Frank Money, a Korean War veteran who wakes up in a Portland mental hospital bruised, robbed and hung over. Although he can’t remember the events that led him there, he knows his drinking is to blame. Frank begins a journey home to Lotus, Georgia, where he hopes to find his ailing sister, Ycidra (Cee).

Cee is a second narrator. She was literally born on the street, an event her grandmother Lenore said was “prelude to a sinful, worthless life.” Lenore physically and verbally abused Cee and resented the way Frank cared for her “like a pet kitten.” Cee depends heavily on Frank, but when Frank begins to feel suffocated in Lotus, he sees enlistment as his only way out. Without Frank to protect her, Cee spontaneously marries Prince, an egotistical opportunist who was “the first thing she saw wearing belted trousers instead of overalls.” Prince drags Cee to Atlanta and abandons her shortly after their wedding. She is barely making ends meet when she accepts a promising job with Dr. Beauregard Scott.

Lily is a third narrator. She was the only thing that distracted Frank from flashbacks and drinking when he returned from the war traumatized. But eventually Lily becomes disenchanted with Frank’s indifference and depression. One day he asks her to loan him money to visit his sister and she is relieved to see him go.

The final narrator is Lenore, the cruel grandmother. Lenore is bitter and resentful. She is alienated from nearly everyone in her community and provides a stark contrast to the other women in Lotus who ultimately play such an important role in Frank and Cee’s lives.

After Cee suffers a traumatic and unnerving accident in Atlanta, Frank tracks her down and reluctantly brings her back to Lotus. In their youth both Frank and Cee hated their hometown. Cee believed “if she hadn’t been so ignorant living in a no-count, not-even-a-place town with only chores, church-school, and nothing else to do” she wouldn’t have fallen for Prince and ended up in Atlanta, working for Dr. Scott. Frank thought Lotus was the “worst place in the world, worse than any battlefield.“ In Lotus “there was no future, just long stretches of killing time … nothing to survive or worth surviving for.” But upon their return they recognize a feeling of “safety and goodwill” they hadn’t noticed before. Frank now finds Lotus “fresh and ancient, safe and demanding.”

Cee, who all her life knew only the cruelty of her grandmother, develops an affection for the women of Lotus, the women who nurse her back to health with wisdom and potions. She is transformed by the women who “took responsibility for their lives and for whatever, whoever else needed them.”

As Frank watches his sister recover physically and mentally, he vows to address something from his past that has been troubling him, an event that has been hinted out throughout the novel. In the final chapter we find out his secret.

Each narration is like a puzzle piece, and bit by bit each character’s story is revealed. By cutting from narrator to narrator Morrison not only creates suspense, but it gives the reader diverse perspectives on the events of the novel. It also reinforces the theme of family and community that is so often present in Morrison’s novels. It proves that our stories, our histories and our fates are often intertwined and interdependent.

Home may be a small novel, but it packs quite a punch.