Ideologically dense, emotionally complex, confusing as hell--in other words, it's vintage Morrison. Awesomely epic without succumbing to gassy, self-absorbed grandeur (hello there, "Beloved" and "Paradise"), "Solomon" is nothing less than a literary magic trick, conjuring up a mythic all-black phantasmagoria of magicians, assassins, and explorers, and then holding up a cracked mirror and showing us that it's nothing more than a distorted reflection of our own world. As Milkman Dead searches for buried treasure and unearths his family's storied past, he also uncovers an urgent, deeply moving message; in order to understand the nameless things that drive us, we must look not ahead but behind, at the forces that shaped us. Morrison's crackling poetry-prose hybrid is in fine form here, as is her Twain-esque eye for rural detail and dialect. But the book's sturdy moral backbone is what sticks with you. As it explores the effects of past failures on present pains, it reveals the power of memory, and thus justifies the very existence of language itself. One of the few modern novels that's as essential as the Bible or Shakespeare. I like it just a little bit.