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I wanted to dislike this book for its dismal "mood." Hesitant, I wondered whether to continue reading this now, or abandon it for later, when I could bear the thought of stepping back into time with the main character as he visited a traumatic past. I don't quite know how to welcome hopelessness as a thematic undertone and overtone, so this week especially, I didn't know whether I could suffer with Frank as he faced the world with an outlook of disdain and pure agony, remembering when he had no one, no money, no pride; as he remembered the Korean War, when he had enlisted because this was his only way out of his disheartening situation. There, surrounded by the only friends he had, who like him, had escaped their town to find some meaning as soldiers, life would again revisit his demise.

PTSD. That oh-so-misunderstood acronym. Yet Toni Morrison--in a way only Toni Morrision can--has Frank cooly dramatize his soldier-acquired ailment so that even if you don't get it, you get him:

When he was alone and sober, whatever the surroundings, he saw a boy pushing his entrails back in, holding them in his palms like a fortune-teller's globe shattering with bad news; or he heard a boy with only the bottom half of his face intact, the lips calling mama. And he was stepping over them, around them, to stay alive, to keep his own face from dissolving, his own colorful guts under that oh-so-thin sheet of flesh.

No judgments. Only lyrical candidness.

Like the men and women of Paradise, Morrison's characters of Lotus, Georgia are down-trodden black folks who are immigrants in their own home. Kicked off their land in Texas and forced to cross state lines. Or else. Frank and his little sister, Ycidra, find themselves living in a small house with a cruel step-grandmother. While their parents toiled the fields daily, Frank took care of his baby sister. Frank and Cee: inseparable. Until war, alcohol, and death drew him further away from her. Suddenly, he was no longer there when she really needed him.

How much distress and disappointment can a person take?

I hated feeling their pain. Hated the gloom. Grew disappointed at the lack of happiness. Despite this (and most likely because of this), I grew to love this succinct display of detached pain, a work so unlike Morrison's ornate paragraphs and dialogue. This is a novella with thematic appeal. Sure, I will remember the expressionless Cee and those eyes: "flat, waiting, always waiting. Not patient, not hopeless, but suspended." Yes, I will remember the sometimes-humorous Frank:"Women are eager to talk to me when they hear my last name. Money? They snigger and ask the same questions…was I a gambler or thief or some other kind of crook they should watch out for? When I tell them my nickname, what folks back home call me, Smart Money, they scream with laughter and say: Ain't no such thing as dumb money, just dumb folks." But what I will really remember is the incandescent pain and despair. I will remember that once I looked closely, I found that hope transcended hopelessness through Cee and that trauma was revived through memory. Could it have been longer? Sure. But I will take a novella from Toni Morrison any day.

…Memories, powerful as they were, did not crush him anymore or throw him into paralyzing despair.