In Morrison’s universe, shame is never far away.

They tell themselves stories in order to live, to make better sense of past pains, and their urgency gives their tales a sense of brave desperation undercut with shame. Her heroes and villains, separated by a thin membrane, follow Joan Didion’s dictum. The protest novel, of course, has never been Morrison’s thing she’s more interested in excavating her characters’ interior lives, and their ancestral connections to the worlds of history and myth. In her work this is never merely a physical matter, but a symptom and reminder of the country's bloodstained past. Morrison remains deeply imaginative in depicting the historical ravaging of the black body. Instead, as Bride finds herself reckoning with her past, she physically reverts to childhood. There's no reincarnation, as in Beloved, or humans taking Song of Solomon flight. You'll also find a touch of what could be called Morrison's magical realism, a term that has always felt a little trite. A little girl is born with skin so black her mother will not touch her. God Help the Child: A novel Hardcover Deckle Edge, Apby Toni Morrison (Author) 5,168 ratings Editors' pick Best Literature & Fiction See all formats and editions Kindle 11.99 Read with Our Free App Audiobook 0.00 Free with your Audible trial Hardcover 9.43 Other new, used and collectible from 1. The maggots, overfed and bursting with glee, had gone home leaving fastidiously clean bones under the strips of his mud-caked yellow T-shirt.” Morrison has always had the command to render the most horrific scenes with uncompromising splendor. GOD HELP THE CHILD by Toni Morrison RELEASE DATE: ApBrutality, racism and lies are relieved by moments of connection in Morrison's latest.

Here’s Bride’s lover, the peripatetic Booker, identifying the remains of his brother as a child: “Filthy, rat-gnawed, with a single open eye socket. Every page contains at least one passage of breathtaking prose, a lyrical flow accentuated by stark imagery and laden with poetic contrasts. It’s as hard as ever to pick nits in Morrison’s writing.

God Help the Child by Toni Morrison