Love

Rating:
Summary: Love
Review: Toni Morrison's latest achievement in her literary canon, "Love", is a quaint little novel that perhaps may not be as dramatic as "Beloved" or as ingenious as "The Bluest Eye", but still holds more poetic power than most post-modern authors.

"Love" tells the intertwining story of several women and their six different relationships with this one legendary man, Bill Cosey, the owner of a massive resort in Up Beach. All of these women are somehow infatuated with this man, tying them all together in this mosaic of American lives and dreams.

Although it may not be as original as her early works, this is certainly a successful attempt at following in the multiple story line progression, something very common in today's writing. What truly saves this book is the power of the narration by the mysterious character L, the chef whose name has been lost over time. Here, we still know that Morrison's poetry is still alive even after those long breaks between novels. L sees all and comments on it, objectively, with this long, breathtaking monologues that capture more essence than perhaps most of the novel.

The themes explored are obviously the types and effects of love. Morrison does a fine job, leaving just enough said about each relationship, but once again, L steals every scene, even when she isn't the central figure.

Rating:
Summary: Is Love lacking?
Review: While Toni Morrison's newest novel, Love, contains the poetry we have come to expect, it was lacking it other places. I was unable to understand the actions of the characters, except maybe Romen, a young boy trying to figure out right from wrong.
Christine and Heed, two women who were friends in childhood, grew to despise each other through a misunderstanding. Their hatred seems to be only surface, though neither can admit her past wrongs to the other so they can both achieve their goals and share in their happiness. Hating each other is easier than confessing their mutual love.
What's missing from this novel? The kind of mystery prominent in Jazz and Beloved. Morrison often creates an alternate reality in her novels, forcing us to suspend disbelief and for a few hours, become part of a different kind of reality. In Jazz, Violet's behavior verges on insane (sitting down in the middle of the street, stealing a baby, cutting a dead girl's face), yet it seems plausible and almost like something we've heard of in the papers. The fact that a ghost could come back to life and live among her family in Beloved is more along the realm of fantasy or science fiction, yet as a reader we are intrigued by the possibility. Morrison's skill at using verisimilitude in other elements of her story makes the fantastic seem likely. Love, however, tells the story of an old, horny, yet generous man, Bill Cosey, whose exploits are more like what we'd see on the ten o'clock news than what we want to imagine is possible. Maybe Love is just too real. Maybe it reminds me too much of myself instead of bringing me into a realm of impossibility come true.

Rating:
Summary: Like melted butter and honey
Review: Listening to Toni Morrison read Love is like watching melted butter and honey flow out the crack in a steaming buttermilk biscuit, like watching chocolate syrup run down a dollop of ice cream. While this master writer covers the history of a particular people, she also digs deep into the universal truths, relationships and emotions that color our individual journeys, no matter what our race or time.

Rating:
Summary: love
Review: Toni Morrison's newest novel "Love" combines the elements and themes of all her novels in a seemingly simple tale. On some level all of her novels address the issues of friendship, love and ghosts of the past. This tale reminds me of her earlier novels such as "Tar Baby" and "Sula" because it is not as ambiguous in its narratives as her later novels. The women in the novel all love the mysterious Bill Cosey in the novel. However, the love in this novel is not romantic but human. The love is flawed and by the end of the novel the characters will come to terms with this knowledge. Morrison is known for her women characters so the character of Romen was a breath of fresh air. I especially enjoyed the character of Romen who represented the struggle of not only coming to terms with manhood but the struggle to be his true self. Even though this novel is not her best it still is better than its predecessor "Paradise." Overall, I truly enjoyed reading this novel.

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Summary: Love Lost and Recaptured
Review: LOVE is the captivating story of several women whose lives are all inextricably tied. The common denominator is Bill Cosey, founder of the Cosey Hotel and Resort. On one page Morrison has the reader feeling empathy for Cosey, and on the very next page the feelings change to disgust. After completion of the novel one will probably have ambivalent feelings for Cosey at best.

Surprisingly, the entire focus of the book is not simply on Cosey's relationships with all the women. There are several story lines and relationships to be worked out. There are indeed elements of love in the story (parental love, romantic love, and love between friends); however, there is much raw emotion as well which is evidenced in the pain, hate, and passion that comes tearing through the pages like a freight train.

At the end of the novel I could understand why Morrison titled her book LOVE, for it is ultimately the story of a love that has been lost and recaptured. Love that stands the test of time.

Rating:
Summary: Morrison's Seascape Triumph
Review: I would definitely recommend Toni Morrison's Love for any reader, but I especially recommend it to women. Morrison is a living legend, and to have one's hands on something so hot from the press is exhilarating.
Beyond the newness, the book is excellent. As always, Morrison's characters are complex and intriguing. She has a way of describing a character that sets them up instantly. More layers of each character are revealed as she goes on, but the primary impressions are phenomenal. One that sticks out for me is one of her first descriptions of Christine, who when readers first meet her is sitting in a kitchen patiently peeling shrimp, with several diamond rings on her fingers. The diamond rings are reason enough for me to keep reading. Her poetic descriptions bring characters to life.
The setting has a life of its own as well. While she never quite gives the setting a precise geographical location, the aura of the beach town pervades excellently, from visuals, to smells, and to something more; just the feeling of the town is conveyed to readers.
With some novels, I find myself consciously trying to set the pictures in my mind, draw the images, attach faces to characters. With Morrison, I never have time to make this effort, because, effortlessly, they are there. People and images are instantly materialized into my mind's eye by the power of Morrison's language.
The reason that I recommend this book to women is the powerful theme of what the love of a man can do to a female relationship. Too often friends are pulled apart over love. I feel that I'm simplifying Morrison's story, but trust me, the theme will resonate for many women. The title Love is apt; it shows in vivid detail the many sides of love, giving us in graphic detail the destructive and yet redemptive powers of love.

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Summary: That messy, wonderful emotion
Review: Similar to her earlier novel Jazz, Toni Morrison's Love blends a hundred years of history into the present action of the novel. The effect is that the reader jumps forwards, backwards and sideways through time as if following the memories, the psyches of the characters. However, different from my reading experience with Jazz, I found myself following these twists in Love far more easily. Perhaps this is because Jazz was the first novel I had read by Morrison and I was unused to her writing style. Or perhaps following my professor's suggestion of creating a timeline as I read added to my experience. I give credence to both these possibilities; yet there are also distinct differences between Jazz and Love which explain my contrasting experiences.

In Jazz, a strangely loud, nosey and unidentifiable narrator takes the reader through her version of events claiming to know all but, in the end, conceding she does not. Love is structured around a narrative as told by the character L, the one time cook at Cosey's Hotel and Restaurant. L's words open, break up various portions, and close the novel. While L's version of events ground the novel in an identifiable pattern, the remaining narrative - which seems to be told by an omniscient narrator - clearly and consistently distinguishes which individual character's psyche is being revealed at any given moment. In my opinion, the differences between Jazz and Love do not make one novel more superior to the other. The differences are most likely manifestations of the different motivations Morrison had in my mind when she wrote each novel. I enjoyed both and look forward to reading Morrison in the future.

As for Love, Morrison brings the reader into the world of this complex and often messy emotion. Love between friends, love between couples - married and not, love between families - all are on display. The ghost-like memory of Bill Cosey haunts and unites each of the novel's characters. Heed, his wife; May, his daughter; and Christine, his granddaughter, engage in a battle for Cosey's love or at least some facsimile of love - attention, acceptance, property.

Ultimately, however, the central focus is not the love of a dead man. There is the love of Heed and Christine's friendship destroyed by misunderstandings and outside forces. There is the love Romen must find for himself or lose that self forever. There is the love Junior has never known until it's too late. Morrison's version of love is not easy, not pretty and rarely pleasant; but, in the end, love is far more beautiful because it is what it is. Love gives two girls, two women someone to belong to, allows a young man to respect himself and gives a desperate girl a chance to see beyond her past and deformed appendage.

One should know that Morrison's Love is not a Valentine's Day card with hearts, flowers and candy. Yet this love is far more interesting and well worth reading because it exists irregardless of what it looks like on the surface.

Rating:
Summary: Love is "A Must Read"
Review: LOVE is the tale of several women bound to each other by their love or dependence on the memory of Bill Cosey, the deceased proprietor of the Cosey Hotel and Resort. Founded during the depression era, affluent African- Americans frequented the Cosey beachfront property to enjoy luxuries and pleasures of many kinds-without fear of discrimination. With the mounting civil rights movement and the upward progress of African-Americans in society, business steadily declined. By the 1990's-the time the novel is set in-all that remains is the decaying mansion and three aging, angry women that remain loyal to its legacy-May, Christine, and Heed.

Christine and Heed were childhood friends, but the bond between them was destroyed when Cosey took Heed (at age 11) to wife. The broken union between these two young girls is perhaps the deepest love story in LOVE (it is foreshadowed in the novel's opening commentary by L.-Cosey's cook). Various subplots include the relationship between local boy Romen and tough, reform-school girl Junior that mirrors that of Christine and Heed, the ambiguous circumstances of Cosey's death, his clandestine affair with Celestial, and his will. The narrative reveals these in a style reminiscent of Faulkner's. Shifts in time and context similar to the style presented in JAZZ challenge the reader's level of involvement at every turn.

LOVE lacks the supernatural luridness of BELOVED but nonetheless has a "monster" of its own driving its characters to obsession. The novel is indeed "A Must Read" that will leave you branded by its searing familiarity.

Rating:
Summary: Crazy Love
Review: Shakespeare once said, "The course of true love never did run smooth." Toni Morrison takes this to heart in her most recent novel. Love is about the intense love female characters have for the charismatic Bill Cosey, proprietor of the Cosey Hotel and Resort. However, the intensity of their love often betrays them and dissolves into hatred and back again. Humans are innately complicated, and thankfully, Morrison never deprives her reader of complex characters, always exploring both the good and bad.

Bill sees his granddaughter, Christine, and her playmate, Heed, and decides to marry Heed even though she is an 11 year-old child. Christine felt betrayed because Heed was her closest friend, and now disturbingly has become her grandmother. They become enemies living together after Bill leaves an ambiguous will leaving the resort to an unnamed woman in his life. Junior, the young woman who Heed hires, develops an infatuation with the spirit of Bill amidst her affair with Romen, a young teen, who does yard work for Christine and Heed. Romen ultimately becomes the savior of the two women who reconnect after Junior leaves them to die in the Cosey Resort. Morrison wraps the plot around narrative by L, Bill's cook, who reveals the history of the characters throughout each chapter. She is responsible for having poisoned Bill's food, thinking this might end the quest for his attention the women have, but it only complicates matters further, so L gives up and leaves. This book is an enjoyable read, more so than Jazz, which was not as concise and contained characters so pathetic it was hard to empathize with their plight, but both novels explore the cadence of love, and its many winding facets.

Rating:
Summary: Don't Love Love
Review: I've only read two Toni Morrison books so far, and she writes weird. Like the past is more important than the present in her novels. Love takes us to every aspect of the characters' past that could possibly be a factor in their present personalities. I mean, leave something to the readers. I found there was too much yucky sex references. Blah! Stuff that's not fit to print here. The characters are very complex, though, so kudos for that.