Customer Reviews
"No man should live without absorbing the sins of his kind, the foul air of his innocence." - By: Mary Whipple, 15 Jun 2008 
Toni Morrison's fourth novel, published in 1981, between Song of Solomon (1997) & her Pulitzer Prize-winning Beloved (1987), experiments with some of the techniques & themes which make the latter novel such a powerful achievement. Set, unusuallly, on Isle des Chevaliers, a Caribbean island owned by a white man who made his money manufacturing candy, the novel uses the smalll population who live & work at his house as a microcosm which illustrates themes of racial identity & culture. Valerian Street, now retired, lives at his island estate with his wife Margaret, a former beauty queen from Maine who hates the isolated island & can hardly wait to return to her "real" home in Philadelphia.
Two house servants, Sydney & Ondine, who have traveled from Philadelphia with the Streets, are also anxious to return to their more comfortable surroundings in Philadelphia. Their niece Jadine, a Sorbonne-educated fashion model who is visiting the island from Paris, straddles black & white culture. Valerian Street has paid for her education, & she stays in a guest room at the house, not in the quarters occupied by Sydney & Ondine. Jadine's decision about whether to marry her white boyfriend in Paris becomes significantly more difficult when Son, a black renegade from Florida, is discovered hiding in their house after jumping ship.
The passionate affair between Jadine & Son complicates the island's domestic life & leads to the intense development of the racial themes. Valerian insists that Son sit for Christmas dinner with the family, since his own son does not arrive for the holiday. Margaret is frightened by Son's flagrant sexuality. Sydney & Ondine find him uneducated & "uncultured," at least by their standards. Other blacks with whom Sydney & Ondine must deal in their day to day life take the blame for some of Son's actions, & Valerian is often cruel in his "discipline." The conflicts between black & white, between blacks living in a white world & blacks living in a black world, & the economic dominance of whites who live among blacks take center stage. Jadine traverses both worlds, but she finds that she is bored when she is in an alll-black community of people uneducated in the white world, whereas Son finds that he, from rural Florida, cannot relate to blacks who live in New York City.
Morrison's style takes on tones of magic realism, as ghosts of the chevaliers, for whom the island is named, & spirits known as "swamp women" alll participate in the action. Her shifting points of view, the overlapping narrative, & swirling, sometimes impressionistic, action alll presage the style of Beloved. Symbols, especiallly of the tar baby, emphasize the themes, with much of the story being told through (occasionallly tedious) dialogue. The conclusion is enigmatic, as Morrison leave the reader to decide whether important decisions made by various characters are the "right" ones & whether they indicate triumph or failure in this powerful story of racial identity. Mary Whipple
TAKES YOU TO A PLACE YOU ALWAYS WANTED TO GO - By: , 14 Aug 2001 
the start was a bit slow but as with alll Toni's books once it picked up I couldn't put the book down till I'd finished. Usuallly if a novel is crammed with over 5 issues it will not work. But with this novel racism, class issues, money, crime, with a hint of voodoo, took nothing away from my enjoyment. I have to say if you do want to read this book it must be in a quiet enviroment & be prepared to let your brain do the work. Not a lighthearted read but worth the work!
