Milkman Dead was born shortly after a neighborhood eccentric hurled himself off a rooftop in a vain attempt at flight. For the rest of his life he, too, will be trying to fly. With this brilliantly imagined novel, Toni Morrison transfigures the coming-of-age story as audaciously as Saul Bellow or Gabriel Garci a Ma rquez. As she follows Milkman from his rustbelt city to the place of his family's origins, Morrison introduces an entire cast of strivers and seeresses, liars and assassins, the inhabitants of a fully realized black world.
Reviews
"A rich, full novel. . . . It lifts us up [and] impresses itself upon us like a love affair." --"The New York Times Book Review ""Exuberant. . . . An artistic vision that encompasses both a private and national heritage." "A rhapsodic work. . . . Intricate and inventive." --"The New Yorker ""Stunningly beautiful. . . . Full of magnificent people. . . . They are still haunting my house. I suspect they will be with me forever." --Anne Tyler, "The Washington Post ""If Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man went underground, Toni Morrison's Milkman flies." --John Leonard, "The New York Times Book Review ""It places Toni Morrison in the front rank of contemporary American writers. She has written a novel that will endure." --"The Washington Post ""Lovely. . . . A delight, full of lyrical variety and allusiveness. . . . [An] exceptionally diverse novel." --"The Atlantic Monthly ""Morrison is a terrific storyteller. . . . Her writing evokes the joyful richness of life." --"Newsday ""Morrison dazzles. . . . She creates a black community strangely unto itself yet never out of touch with the white world. . . . With an ear as sharp as glass she has listened to the music of black talk and uses it as a palette knife to create black lives and to provide some of the best fictional dialogue around today." --"The Nation ""A marvelous novel, the most moving I have read in ten years of reviewing." --"Cleveland Plain Dealer ""Toni Morrison has created a fanciful world here. . . . She has an impeccable sense of emotional detail. She's the most sensible lyrical writer around today." --"The Philadelphia Inquirer ""A fine novel exuberantly constructed. . . . So rich in its use of common speech, so sophisticated in its use of literary traditions and language from the Bible to Faulkner . . . it is also extremely funny." --"The Hudson Review ""Toni Morrison is an extraordinarily good writer. Two pages into anything sh