I really enjoyed Song of Solomon because of the way the book was written. I felt like reading this novel was like putting a puzzle together on hard mode. Every time I felt like I had an idea of what I was looking at, the next chapter will either shuffle around some of my old pieces or add some that look like they should be part of another puzzle. For example, when Macon is explaining that his harsh behavior towards Ruth are because of what he saw between her and Dr. Foster, I thought I knew what was going on and my puzzle was starting to take shape. Then a few chapters later the book comes back and scrambles up the puzzle again when we find out about Ruth's part of the story. I hate puzzles but I like how the book kept changing from chapter to chapter, it kept the novel interesting because there was always a possibility that a crucial bit of information was being kept away to be revealed later.
As for the characters, I think they all really fall under two categories: Crazy or Will be crazy in a chapter or two. Now to be fair, my definition of crazy is when a character does something that just makes me think "What the heck is he/she doing?'. The only exception that I found was Guitar because earlier on in the book he looked like the normal person we were supposed to understand in the novel. He wasn't related to Milkman's crazy family and was more involved in political activism than upper-middle class parties. But of course I'm always wrong and should have expected a man named Guitar to be part of a secret society called The Seven Days and just like Hagar, becomes determined to kill Milkman by any means necessary. All jokes aside however, the relationships between the characters in this novel are really unique, with Milkman as the focal point of everyone's emotions. He seems to be responsible for the happiness of characters in one chapter while also being the cause of a lot of grief in the next. Whereas in other novels we've read so far, such as The Sun also rises everyone was too drunk to know what was going on so we don't really have a reliable narrator.
I haven't actually finished the book at the time I'm posting it but from what I've read so far, the book is really enjoyable. The novel had a feeling of absurdity in the beginning when they were explaining Not Doctor Street but as the book progressed it seemed to become serious when Hagar is out to kill Milkman. Then all bets are off when the main character runs off to Virginia and gets into bar fights over dong shapes. The book was unpredictable, kept messing up my puzzle, and I liked every chapter of it.
