Love

Rating:
Summary: Timeless Love
Review: Love is a hard book to recommend to anyone. "Love" is a love-it-or-hate-it type of book, both in terms of content, and a reader's appreciation of it. The genius (or the greatest flaw) of the book is Morrison's penchant for flipping back and forth between timelines. A reader may be reading one of the main characters observations of current events, then, suddenly when the new paragraph starts the narration shifts to previous decades. No transitional sentence, no helping hand from Morrison. Point-A to Point-B. Of course this is a wonderful entry into the human psyche, as that is how people think. Our brains skip through our memories like hopscotch, and Morrison nails this perfectly in her text. However, to some readers, this seamless transition between timelines may be jarring and confusing. The reader may even have to reread previous paragraphs to catch what it is that they missed, only to realise that this is a new time they are reading about. To her merit, Morrison has a wonderfully lucid style that makes the journey into the lives of Heed, Christine, and Bill Cosey an enjoyable one. She creates characters that are duly unlikable such as May. Others that are morally devoid such as Christine who as more is revealed to the reader the more endearing she becomes. Even the narrator, L, who is probably the only rational person in the entire story, and manages to straddle the fine line between her love and protection of the Cosey girls and her aloof detachment to leave them to their own devices. In the end, Love is a great book that is an easy and entertaining read, and any reader with a sharp eye should enjoy the mysteries contained therein.

Rating:
Summary: Love
Review: Love is a novel about the raw emotions brought into relationships such as love, lust, betrayal, or hate. Because a man like Bill Cosey has power and money he can marry a child and have full molestation rights in his own bedroom. He creates tension in his own home because he has insulted and betrayed family by marrying an eleven-year-old girl. Morrison writes about common occurrences such as friends torn apart by men, jealous family members creating havoc in the household, and the obstacles of raw emotions thrown into relationships. Morrison leaves the readers confused on whom to hate but gives subtle hints leaving the reader feeling sorry for everyone but the perverted Bill Cosey.

Rating:
Summary: Not for the simpleminded
Review: This is only the third novel of Morrison's that I have read, but compared to JAZZ and THE BLUEST EYE it is probably the best. I have a hard time rating her books in comparison to one another because they are so emotionally charged and yet so different.

Bill Cosey is the owner of a prestigious hotel for blacks, providing them with music, food, and enjoyment. He has a certain power about him that draws people to him, men and women alike. Long after he is dead he still continues to huant those around him, causing love to do unthinkable things: hate, vengeance, death, etc. Morrison weaves all of these themes together to form one cohesive theme:Love and what love can drive a person to do.

Heed, Cosey's second wife who married him at the young age of eleven, Christine, May, and L form the nucleus of Cosey's life and hotel(even a new girl, Junior, is enthralled with the deceased Cosey) . These women are driven to do unthinkable things in the name of love, even if it means hate and death. They find themselves locked in a bitter battle over his will, and only the surprising end curtails the evils of the will. Only someone like Morrison could weave a novel dealing with so much hate and title it LOVE.

Rating:
Summary: All you need is . . .
Review: Beware when Toni Morrison titles a novel "Love." Morrison, after all, is the woman who in "Beloved" pondered whether love could cause a mother to kill her child, and this latest novel once again explores the violence and self-destruction that people are driven to in the name of love.

Short but dense, Love is a kind of neo-gothic fraught with violence, betrayal, sex, and madness. It's a difficult and demanding novel in which it takes some time to sort out exactly who the characters are and how they relate to each other. It all does eventually come together nicely. The best novel from Morrison in some time.

Rating:
Summary: An Exquisite and Perfect Book
Review: I know many people who don't consider LOVE to be one of Toni Morrison's most accomplished novels. I am absolutely not among those persons. While, on its surface, LOVE may seem to be a simple, more straightforward story than the very symbolic BELOVED or the somewhat sketchy and metaphorical PARADISE, I think it's structure is highly sophisticated and could have only been written by one of the world's premier authors. In short, I think LOVE is absolutely perfect in every respect.

LOVE is filled with perhaps the quirkiest cast of characters ever to be found in a Toni Morrison work. The book centers around Bill Cosey, the owner of a run down seaside hotel who has been dead for twenty-five years when the novel opens in the 1990s. Although Cosey is the centerpiece of LOVE, it the women in his life and the exertion of his influence over them, as well as their own complex relationships that form the core of LOVE, for Cosey was, by all accounts, charismatic and charming, quirky and beguiling...in short, no ordinary man, and his influence continues to be felt long after his physical presence has departed.

There is Cosey's former cook, "L," whose narration frames the story contained in LOVE. There is his lover, the mysterious Celestial, his daughter-in-law, May, and, in particular, there is his granddaughter, Christine and his second wife, the arthritic, Heed. Although May, Christine and Heed, now all quite aged, live together in Cosey's decaying mansion, it is the relationship between Christine and Heed that drives the book's narrative because it is Christine and Heed who have the most in common, who are bound together by more than their love and hate for Cosey. It is Christine and Heed who, in childhood, were the fastest of friends and it is Cosey who destroyed that friendship and drove a wedge between the girls. The relationship between Christine and Heed is fascinating as we watch its dynamics and balance of power change...and then change again.

Just because women take center stage in LOVE, this is not to say that men are absent from the book. They aren't. Conspicuously present are Sandler, an employee of Cosey's and Romen, a local boy who forms a none-too-healthy bond with Junior, a most unlikely girl. And, most present of all, is Cosey, himself...in one form or another.

While relationships form the core of LOVE, there is an interesting subplot concerning Cosey's will, which was drunkenly scrawled on a menu. The will is ambiguous...open to individual interpretation...and the women in Cosey's life do interpret it quite differently, indeed. It is the dispute over the will that drives the physical plot of LOVE.

As the "house that Cosey built" crumbles like a house of cards, Heed's, Christine's and May's vulnerabilities are exposed, as are the long dead Cosey's. The women still have time to reshape their shattered lives, to share their communal pain and untangle the puzzle imposed on them by Cosey, but will they? You'll have to read the book to find out; any hint of the resolution here would be destructive.

Like all of Toni Morrison's novels, LOVE is filled with holes and spaces...gaps and silences for the reader to fill in. Almost more than any other author, Morrison requires that her readers participate in the growth of the novel with her. I like this aspect of this brilliant writer and commend her for it. Also present in the narrative are "trademark" Morrison time shifts, flashbacks, and changing points of view. Some readers may be confused by LOVE'S sophisticated structure, but I found myself enthralled.

LOVE is certainly not a romance, but it is a book about love, or, more precisely, about the destructive power of love and about the psychic injuries and scars that we accrue when love is absent from our lives.

LOVE is rich and dense and deep and sensual. It's a lyrical, poetic work that you'll want to read once for the story and then again, simply for the language. I think it's Toni Morrison's masterpiece...yes, even better than the gorgeous and unforgettable BELOVED or the richly complex SONG OF SOLOMON. I can't imagine what this immensely brilliant author will reward us with next, but, whatever it is, I can hardly wait.

Rating:
Summary: This Should Be One Even the Masses Can Understand
Review: Not everyone can take on a Toni Morrison novel and walk away with a full or even a half full understanding of what took place. Love will be the one in her repertoire that most of the pop influenced culture will turn to in effort to say that they have read one of her novels. They will even laud it as one of the best because this will be the only one they have read or mostly comprehended.

Love is an easy read, but Ms. Morrison's use of language and her power of description will still make any reader reflect on the profoundness of the story. Her characters are so captivating and so strong they almost scar you with their complexities. Yes, they do live. That is Ms. Morrison's strength; making her characters live. The story was simple, but told with a grandeur that only this author can tell it with. The scenes were full, the plot was complex, and the story well put together.

Ms. Morrison has done it again.

Rating:
Summary: Simple title. Complex book
Review: Toni Morrison is without peer; and she just keeps getting better and better. In Love (have you EVER heard a more audacious title?), Morrison crafts a rich and dense novel that illuminates the full spectrum of desire. Bill Cosey, a charismatic guy who runs a ritzy seaside resort for African Americans in the wild and wooly 40s and 50s, is her protagonist for a while. But now he's dead, and the story becomes a portrait of his power, unusual for black men of his times.
Women. Oh, where would this story be without women? In Bill's wake, the women of his life vie for position, scrabbling over the will he wrote eons ago on a throw-away menu.
If you love Toni Morrison's rich writing style, you won't be disappointed, but you might want to keep a pen and pad of paper handy to keep track of the loooong list of characters.

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing, but accomplished all the same
Review: Toni Morrison's fiction has justifiably been heralded as some of the best existing within contemporary literature. In her newest novel, LOVE, Morrison weaves a simpler and more easily followed story than she did in PARADISE. Set in Up Beach, a dying resort town that once attracted the finest jazz musicians and their upper class followers, Morrison creates a tale of failed lives and dreams. Hotel owner Bill Cosey was powerful in life, and is even more powerful in death, as his mistakes and decisions live on in those who survived him and even in those who never knew him.

The writing is elegantly exact, though I would expect nothing less from Morrison, but, in the voice of L, the italicized voice framing the novel, can become overly grand. At times, I couldn't help hearing the voice of Della Reese in "Touched By An Angel," the preachy, sentimental television show of a while back. Still, this novel is engrossing and surprisingly accessible. Until the second half, when Morrison fails to bring together the narratives into a powerful and convincing whole, this novel promised to be one of Morrison's best.

Part of my disappointment in this book comes from my expectations; Morrison is truly one of America's finest writers, and I had hoped to discover another literary tour de force. Instead, this novel feels small, not because of its relatively short length but because Morrison fails to take the reader beyond the specifics of her characters' lives. Even worse, the ending is neat, and somewhat forced, something I never would have expected from Morrison.

Despite the novel's failings, it is still better than much of what is being published today. You won't find Morrison's masterpiece in LOVE, but you will find skilled writing and an often compelling story. Better than PARADISE but not nearly as accomplished as BELOVED, this novel is middling Morrison, something most other writers can only dream of accomplishing.

Rating:
Summary: No Conclusion
Review: Toni Morrison has a wonderful style of writing. The book Love flows and is engaging but, at the same time misleading. This is more a story of poverty and fear. Although I enjoyed the narration, I feel there is a missing chapter - no conclusion drawing the book together. What really happened to Heed, where is Christine, will Junior stay at the house? Perhaps the author intends that we should make up our own ending.

Rating:
Summary: Passionate & amazing
Review: The amazing Ms. Morrison has done it again! Not only is this the story of the complex delusions of Love between Bill Cosey and those around him, it also serves as a social commentary on the relations between the sexes and the races. Often overlooked, Ms. Morrison's social commentary through her literature is keen and passionate. This book captivated me and, as is usual for her exceptional works, kept me thinking (and still keeps me thinking) deeply & intensely about the multiple meanings and messages within its pages. I recommend this book, and others by the author, to readers who appreciate literary genius that makes you hunger for more.
Namaste, Ms. Morrison! Thank you for your phenomenal work.