I had a long drive ahead of me so I stopped in at the
library looking for an audio book. On the New Audio bookshelf, I found Toni
Morrison’s – Home – audio book, read by the author, unabridged, four
discs, four and a half hours. Perfect.
Suffering from allergies or a cold or both, I listened to
most of the story on my drive. Next time I got in the car a couple of days
later, I turned on the CD player and found I couldn’t remember enough of the
story to pick up where I left off. So I had to start all over again. That’s
embarrassing. And freaky.
Do not get me wrong, this had nothing to do with the book
and everything to do with me being sick. As I listened again on my next long
drive, the story made sense, I remembered who all the characters were, and I
had time to listen to the whole thing straight through. Toni Morrison’s
eleventh novel, Home, may be as close to a perfect novel as is possible
to construct. An excellent example of everything I’m trying to learn.
Morrison is a master of “show don’t tell”. Somehow you find
yourself knowing things about the characters, the setting, the time period and
asking yourself, how do I know that? How did she tell me that without telling
me that?
Though deeply wounded, the protagonist is completely
sympathetic. This warrants studying. They say if you can get your reader to see
your protagonist as sympathetic in the first ten pages, you are doing it right.
Morrison does it right.
There is never a moment where you’re tempted to abandon this
story. Every scene is completely engaging. You know the book has to end, but
you don’t want it to.
There are no superfluous events or characters, and every
description, every dialogue is necessary to the telling of the story. This is
story telling at it’s very best.
More later.
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