Love

Rating:
Summary: Another Great Novel
Review: No living author with the possible exception of Gabriel Garcia Marquez has better opening lines than Toni Morrison. For dead writers, she ranks with Melville, Camus and Tolstoy for that honor. LOVE begins with these words: "The women's legs are spread wide open, so I hum. Men grow irritable, but they know it's all for them. They relax. Standing by, unable to do anything but watch, is a trial, but I don't say a word." When Morrison finishes her story about 200 pages later, we have met a host of unforgettable characters, mostly women-- Heed, Christine, May, Junior, Vida, L, all who are obsessed with one Bill Cosey. I always marvel at the strength of Morrison's characters. Although they often face untold hardships, they seldom whine and often prevail. As usual, Morrison's plot is not linear but goes back and forth in time from the Civil Rights era to before and after that time. We get the story little by little and ultimately get the whole story, and what a story it is.

The book obviously is about love. Although there are other kinds of love here-- erotic love, lust masquerading as love-- the central love is that between two children, a love that was ruined by grownups. Years later as adults Heed and Christine finally get around to talking about their lost opportunities: "We could have been living our lives hand in hand instead of looking for Big Daddy everywhere."

There are memorable lines throughout the novel. Christine opines that "her last good chance for happiness [is] wrecked by the second oldest enemy in the world: another woman." Cosey says that "you can live with anything if you have what you can't live without." Finally, Sandler in a lecture to his teenage son gives a moving tribute to women: "A woman is an important somebody and sometimes you win the triple crown: good food, good sex, and good talk. Most men settle for any one, happy as a clam if they get two. But listen, let me tell you something. A good man is a good thing, but there is nothing in the world better than a good good woman. She can be your mother, your wife, your girlfriend, your sister, or somebody you work next to. Don't matter. You find one, stay there."

On of the joys of living now is reading a new Toni Morrison novel. May she live long and write many more!

Rating:
Summary: A bravura performance by a dazzling writer
Review: There are authors whose books you can gulp down at a single sitting; and then there is Toni Morrison. You sip her books slowly, savoring each word; every sentence of Morrison's is a tone poem. One has to read her books twice, once for the story and again just to appreciate her incredible gift with language. "Love" is a slim volume (just over 200 pages) that packs a powerhouse wallop. It's the story of Bill Cosey, long dead, the owner of an upscale hotel for blacks back in the segregated 1940's, and the women whose lives he impacted on in different ways, with a chapter devoted to each: friend, stranger, benefactor, lover, husband, guardian, father and phantom. We see the havoc and destruction he caused in the lives of so many close to him, and especially in two women, his child-bride Heed and his grand-daughter Christine, who were best friends in childhood and grew up as bitter enemies, locked in a vicious co-dependency that can only end when one or the other dies. Morrison doesn't give us a straight narrative; her story deviates from highways to by-ways, weaving in and out until it all comes together in a shattering climax. She shows us that there are all kinds of love, including the love-hate between Heed and Christine that will finally destroy them both in different ways. A great book by an awesomely talented writer who in her own time has become a living legend.

Rating:
Summary: multi layered but fascinating
Review: To be honest, you have to read this book more than once. Fortunately it is not long and the type is huge so it can be done.

It;s a beautiful story about love and how it affects a group of people surroung a man called Cosey, who is loved by many. Love that sometimes started at a very early age.

The timelins is sometimes difficult to follow, but that makes it more interesting to read. Love is there in all times you know!

Read it carefully and then you will be amazed, read it again and you will be amazed even more.

Rating:
Summary: Toni Morrison succeeds again!
Review: I have only read one other novel by Toni Morrison, the Pulitzer winning "Beloved". That is a high standard for any novel to be compared to, but as I started reading "Love" I forgot about anything else and was wrapped up in Morrison's prose. This is not the sort of novel I was able to read with anything distracting in the background. I had to turn off the radio and whatever tv was playing and focus on the book in the quiet, and with each successive chapter, I was enraptured by the book.

This is the story of many things, the most prominent being love. Rather than blandly stating that one character loves another, Morrison spends time developing the relationships between various characters and the different way their loves take shape. This is not all romantic love. We have the love between a husband and a wife, a father and a daughter, lust between teenagers, and various shadings of each. The central figure in this novel is Bill Cosey, a former hotel owner, now deceased. We are given perspectives from Heed, Vida, Christine, Junior, L, Celestial, May, Romen, and Sandler, and together, these characters create a beautiful novel. This is not so much a case of Morrison telling a single story than it is Morrison revealing characters and creating a little section of our world that feels real by the time she is done. Toni Morrison truly is one of the most powerful voices in American Fiction.

Rating:
Summary: Absolutely Lovely
Review: I can never really put my finger on it but whenever I've finished a Morrison novel, I'm left nursing a range of emotions from awe to despair. I'm left pondering what the book was all about, which forces me to exam more closely the themes, characters, and conflicts of the novel. The end result of this closer examination is always a better understanding of self and a richer appreciation for others.

In Morrison's latest novel, the author examines the consequences of perhaps the most sought after emotion in human existence. Love, and its various faces - hate lust, envy - is set during the 1950's in an ocean side town where Bill Cosey owns a resort that caters to middle and upper class blacks. Heed, Christine and May are the primary characters. L, a narrating spirit and former employee of the resort, provides background and insight into the other characters motives in a voice that resonates with truth and love. Heed and Christine share a pure unconditional love that bonds the two in friendship until Bill, Christine's grandfather, takes Heed as his bride. Bill, at age 52, purchases the 11-year-old Heed from her parents in hopes of obtaining a pure and virginal vessel to bear him a son to replace the one he lost to death. May, Christine's mother, sees Heed as a threat to the family's upper-class lifestyle and does everything in her power to disgrace the child bride. The love once shared by Heed and Christine is quickly turned into a life consuming hatred as May enlists Christine in her campaign against Heed.

Morrison unleashes, with grace and assurance, the literary skills she has cultivated over the course of her career. She is a master at telling a story from the inside out. Love, with wonderfully drawn characters and imagistic prose that nearly leaps from the page, is a splendid compliment to the author's literary canon. The novel is thin but deep. The only thing better than reading a Morrison novel is having a few people to discuss it with. Curl up and enjoy!

Rating:
Summary: disappointing
Review: ever since reading 'the bluest eye' at the age of 10 or 11, i have always loved reading toni morrison's novels. unfortunately, i have to say that 'love' left me with an unsatisfied feeling.

it started off really well, i found it thoroughly engaging, and was intrigued in finding out what the source of all the hostility between heed and christine was all about, but by the time i reached the end of the novel i had lost interest in all of the characters and, quite frankly, it felt like toni morrison may have as well.

Rating:
Summary: Hate, anger and love. And the characters leap off the pages
Review: Toni Morrison is a fine writer and this 2003 novel shows her true mastery of the craft. Her books are always thought-provoking and disturbing and "Love" is no exception. Using prose that reads like pure poetry, this is the story of that spans several generations. At its center is Bill Cosey, the wealthy and powerful man who owns a resort hotel for African Americans in the twenties and thirties. He's black too, as are all the main characters in the book, and the sense of the town with its many contrasts is captured completely by the author.

But the essence of the story isn't about Bill. It's about the many women whose lives he affected, and basically ruined, through the years. There's his aging widow who was his child bride. There's his granddaughter who was once a childhood friend of the widow. There's the young and tough former inmate of a correctional institution who comes to work for the widow and begins to spread havoc of her own. She romances the grandson of a local couple who knew Bill Cosey personally and understand the impact he still has on them all, even 25 years after his death.

There's lots of hate in this book. Lots of anger. And characters so well developed that they leap off the pages. The book is all back-story until the unsettling conclusion. The reader is spoon fed the details a little at the time until it all comes together like a complex and unnerving mystery. The end of the book puts most of the pieces of the puzzle together. But, similar to another novel of her hers, "Paradise", the reader is left hanging. And, when I reread the last couple of chapters, I saw it was done on purpose as her own particular literary technique.

In spite of its title, this is a sad and somber book. The love it describes is lost in a moment only to be reclaimed for another moment after a lifetime of hatred. Characters scheme and live to excess and hurt each other. And even acts of passion read like acts of cruelty. It is not a pleasant book to read even though I do applaud Ms. Morison's talent.

Rating:
Summary: also love of self
Review: More than anything this is my comment about how that teenage? girl is suddenly driven into accepting herself when the boy kisses her toe and accepts her deformity. How that instantly changes her, breaks down her wall of defence, and in the process probably also leaving her less mysterios and therefore less attractive in that darkly sexual manner.

For me that was one of the highlights while reading the book. It is very insightful of Toni to write around the event the way she did.

Overall, and compared to other books by her, it's a story that left me feeling warm, almost the same way Song of Solomon did, not too depressed the way Beloved did. It is also much easier to read through, not becasue it's a simple and easy story to tell but maybe because Toni really wanted readers to enjoy the book and at the same time take something from her thoughts.

So thumbs up to love.... and to South Africa for winning the soccer world cup bid, if you don't mind!

Rating:
Summary: LOVELY !
Review: Toni Morrison's new opus, Love is simultaneously a subtle meditation on the machinations of love and a poignant reflection about the epistemological reality of emotions and desires that informs humanity. Though the theme found its effective expression in Sula, it is with Love that Morrison reaches into new emotional depths and seriousness that establish her again as a mature artist. Like Paradise, Love is peopled "by scheming, bitter women and selfish, predatory men: women engaged in cartoon-violent catfights; men catting around and going to cathouses" as Michiko Kakutani observes in The New York Times. But, in spite of such a demoralizing circumambience Love at its core is a creative exercise to comprehend what "friendship and love" would mean as Morrison says, "when there's a cataclysm and conflict in belief."

Set in Atlantic coast, Love centers around the "commanding, beautiful"(36) but enigmatic Bill Cosey and the six women obstinately obsessed with him. Cosey, when alive was a legendary figure and the owner of deluxe hotel and resort where "people debated death in the cities, murder in Mississippi, and what they planned to do about it other than grieve and stare at their children" (35). As the novel begins in 1990's, Cosey (and his resort) is already dead but looms large controlling his granddaughter, Christine as well as his wife, Heed who live in a hate-fueled house to claim the property of Cosey. Amidst such a claustrophobic world comes Junior as a secretary to Heed to help her write the family history of Coseys. In fact, it is through Junior, an 18 years old girl from Correctional, that half of the mysterious life of Cosey is revealed.

Perhaps the most troubling and haunting section of the novel is when we learn that Christian and Heed were close friends and further that Cosey married a "pre-menstrual" 11-year-old Heed some twenty five years before. To quote Christine: "My grandfather married her when she was eleven. We were best friends. One day we built castles on the beach; next day he sat her in his lap. One day we were playing house under a quilt; next day she slept in his bed." With this change in blood and power relationship initiated by Cosey, readers like L are left with the larger question whether to consider Cosey "a good bad man, or a bad good man" (200). Regular readers of Morrison will consider the thematic strands in Love, like "the sins of father" and female bonding, as a reaffirmation of certain truths explored in Morrison's previous novels such as The Bluest Eye, Sula and Song of Solomon.

Another significant textual presence is L, a former cook of Cosey's restaurant, whose choric ruminations not only frames the narration but also fills in Cosey's complicated past. This disembodied and rational voice knew Cosey for a long time and readily understood that "families make the best enemies. They have time and convenience to honey-butter the wickedness they prefer". Such interspersed "humming[s]" (4) of L not only offers clue to the enigmatic relationship between Heed and Christian but also guides the readers to interpret the events of the novel.

Finally like the best of Morrison's novels, Love leaves many questions unanswered such as Is Bill Cosey really good or bad? Did his "pleasure was in pleasing" (33) others as Vida observes? How did Bill Cosey die? Whether "the double C's engraved on the silver was one letter doubled or the pairing of Christian's initials?" (73) Why did Cosey's Resort fail?. Morrison like L makes us believe that we "are both smart and lucky" (4) and prods the readers to find their own answers. While the power of the novel lies in the intense, wrenching plot, its success depends on Morrison's ability to evoke diverse emotions and sustain ambiguities.

In a characteristic vein Love continues Morrison's legacy of exploring sophisticated relationship between history and individuals. If Beloved and Jazz had Slavery and Harlem as their historical backdrop, it is Civil Rights Movement that informs Love. Through depicting the death of Cosey and his heavenly resort as an end of an era Morrison deeply contemplates "what might be lost if Civil Rights have been won" and subtly hints that the resort survived because of the Segregation law. Thus, Love is yet another instance that fits into Morrison's avowed position that "stories and storytelling convey information, necessary information, available nowhere else". Furthermore, there are clear references to the death of Emmett Till, African American militant organizations like SNCC, World War II, Eisenhower years and so on.

Though Love, lacks the poetic vision of Beloved and mythic heft of Song of Solomon, it could be appraised for Morrison's incisive blend of technical expertise and "imaginative" use of language which together serve to comment on time honored themes of the novel. Interspersed with truths charged with passion the language becomes dense and "creative" as "hatred" in the novel. A few vignettes is suffice to illustrate these characteristics:

Their faces, as different as honey and soot, looked identical. Hate does that. Burns off everything but itself, so whatever your grievance is, your face looks just like your enemy's.
Like friendship, hatred needed more than physical intimacy; it wanted creativity and hard work to sustain itself (74).

While stylistically, Love is another instance of Morrison's consummate craftsmanship. Like any other novel of Morrison, we see the use of devices such as multiple points of view, disorientation of time, and retrospective narration. But ultimately, it is Morrison's cosmic mind and humanistic consciousness that make Love possible rather than linguistic and technical athleticism. Given these facts, it will not be surprising to learn that the novel has already won NACCP and Image Award within such a short span, besides being considered for Britain's prestigious Orange Fiction prize. For these virtues Love as The Cleveland Plain Dealer says, "deserves to be read. For pure pleasure, it deserves to be read more than once."

Rating:
Summary: TONI DOES DAYTIME TELEVISION
Review: After having read three of Toni Morrison's previous works (Song Of Solomon, Beloved, Paradise), she has become one of my most treasured authors. So I was thrilled when "Love" was published. And having finished it, she is still at the top of my list, though admittedly, I don't think "Love" carries the resonance of her earlier works.

The one thing that has always drawn me to her work is her ability to tell stories that seem to transcend from the page. Stories of whose importance seem so heavy and significant they almost border on becoming her own specialized form of mythology and folklore, treasured tales to be told generation after generation. Though I enjoyed "Love", it very much read to me as daytime soap opera. It might have to do with the length of the tale but the characters, their actions (and their importance really) seemed to be encased within the vacuum of the story itself. And while the ride Toni takes you through the lives of these two bitter women is an entertaining one, when it is over, you don't leave with a heightened sense of humanity or historical curiosity as with her previous works. It's more or less Toni making a stab at pulp fiction but as pulp fiction goes... it was pretty good.

And out of the three Toni Morrison novels mentioned above (and I assume her other works), this has got to be the most sexually charged piece she's done. (...)

For all the naysayers who feel Toni Morrison is too complex to digest, this should be a good read. Die hard Toni Morrison fans should feel the same way, though maybe hope the next novel will be more profound.