Love

Rating:
Summary: A story about the kind of hatred only love can cause
Review: Enigmatically populated, elliptically rendered, cryptically narrated--"Love" is a tour de force in which every conversation disguises another meaning, every description masks a truth, and every character hides a secret (or two).

At the center of the novel are Heed and Christine, two women at each other's throats. Childhood friends, Heed married Christine's grandfather, Bill Cosey, and ever since they've been fighting, first for his love and attention, then for his legacy after he died without a will. They live together, in Cosey's old home, under a fragile and venomous detente: even so, Christine hires a lawyer to regain her inheritance, and Heed employs Junior, a young woman fresh out of a correctional facility, to promote her own nefarious designs.

All the characters in the novel orbit around Cosey, the long-dead proprietor of "the best and best-known vacation spot for colored folk on the East Coast." The women's neighbor, Sandler, used to be fishing buddies with Cosey, while his wife Vida worked as the hotel receptionist. Their 14-year-old son, Romen, helps Heed and Christine with household errands and is soon seduced by Junior. Informing the narrative with a dispassionate eye is L (Estelle), who worked as the cook at Cosey's resort and who has a few secrets of her own. And a mysterious woman named Celestial haunts the beach and everyone's memories. All their stories--Heed and Christine's, Sandler and Vida's, Junior and Romen's, L and Celestial's--eventually weave together, yet what's fascinating is not simply the resolution of the loose ends and the many mysteries but also how these otherwise intelligent and strong-willed people allow their lives and loves to be dominated and wrecked by one man's weaknesses.

Throughout, nothing is quite what it seems. Even the title is ironic--the novel is as much about hate as about love--or, to be more precise, the kind of hatred only love can cause. Heed's and Christine's unbreakable bond is "a child's first chosen love. If such children find each other before they know their own sex, or which one of them is starving, which well fed; before they know color from no color, kin from stranger, then they have found a mix of surrender and mutiny they can never live without." And, when that love is shattered, the resulting mix of jealousy and spite is equally invincible: "it can kill a life way before it tries to live."

Morrison's ability to condense such complex and intricate plots and themes into a 200-page novel should be the envy of most writers--and the joy of any reader. You'll find yourself soon skimming through "Love" a second time just to figure out what you missed the first.

Rating:
Summary: Confusing!
Review: Love is beautifully written; however, at times the plot is hard to follow. Some of the confusion is cleared up later in the book, but by the time you get there you've already encountered more puzzling details. This is not a book you will be able to read with the t.v. going and the kids running in and out. Despite that problem, the book is definitely a page turner, written in a way that makes you almost feel the breeze coming off the ocean when reading it.

Rating:
Summary: First Corinthians, 13
Review: Toni Morrison's new novel Love deals more with the destruction of love and its aftermath than it does with its creation. In a way, we learn about love by what it is not, by how it can be destroyed quite by chance, by how it can be reborn into hatred and suspicion and malice. Sex ("the clown of love"), a compelling energy in this novel, is something other than love here. Call it a distraction or a dalliance, but it really has nothing to do with the love about which Morrison is writing. "They don't know the real kinds, the better kinds...It takes a certain intelligence to love like that-softly, without props." Instead, love somehow gets caught up in a tangle of "fights to the death, adultery, setting sheets on fire."
Elderly now, Heed and Christine live together in the same house to which each feels entitled. Both are locked in a chess match of sorts. Each is suspicious of the other's moves. Each watchful of one another. Heed has the upper hand in a sense because she has inherited her husband's estate, but Christine resents it and feels as if her inheritance has been stolen from her by Heed. That dispute has its genesis early on when Heed and Christine are playmates and the best of friends. In fact, it is created when eleven year old Heed is chosen to marry Christine's rich and powerful grandfather Bill Cosey. Life from then on loses center. Love is the story of the wake of that off-centeredness.
What is particularly powerful in this novel is Morrison's voice embedded in L's narration. There is in it an intimacy and a confidentiality that embraces the reader as she works her way to the heart of the story and its people. It is L who has witnessed the most intimate of human moments, and it is L who knows the nature of human suffering. Maybe Love is really L's story.
Morrison is such a compelling storyteller.
[...]

Rating:
Summary: Toni Morrison's Love
Review: Reading Pulitzer and Nobel prize- winner, Toni Morrison's most recent novel, Love, was like trying to put together a giant jigsaw puzzle. You never know where you are going to find the next piece, and when you do find it, how will it fit in. Sometimes, however, the pieces are not exactly what you had expected. Somewhat like having your eyes out of focus and not quite sure as to what you are seeing.

In fact, as we discover, some of the raw material of the story turns out to be quite disturbing, as they allude to such acts as child molestation, pedophilia, statutory rape, kinky sex, and whatever else Morrison can throw in.

At the novel's heart is a story revolving around an African American man, William Cosey, "onetime owner of many houses, a hotel resort, two boats, and a bankful of gossiped-about, legendary cash, who always fascinated people, but he had driven the county to fever when then learned he had left no will.... Feeling good, no doubt, from Wild Turkey straight, he had sat down one night with some boozy friends and scrawled among side orders and the day's specials, appetizers, main courses, and desserts the distribution of his wealth to those who pleased him. Three years late a few boozy friends were located and verified the event, the handwriting, and the clarity of the mind that seemed to have had no further thoughts on the matter."

What is most interesting about Cosey was his profound influence he had on the lives of two women, his second wife, Heed and his granddaughter, Christine.
As we learn, both are about the same age, and were at one time child friends.
Shocking, however, was that Cosey married Heed when she was eleven years of age.

Morrison is constantly keeping her readers guessing as to what kind of a person was William Cosey, as she explores his character from different perspectives, breaking it down into distinct chapters entitled, Portrait, Friend, Stranger, Benefactor, Lover, Husband, Guardian, Father, and Phantom

At times the narrative is very elusive, and we are not quite sure where we are going with the story. Although, Morrison's vivid and compelling characters coupled with her poetic dialogue entice us to stick with it until the very end.

The first chapter, entitled Portrait, recounts how a young woman with the unusual name of Junior, who is just out of a correctional institution, is applying for a job as a secretary to Cosey's widow, Heed. Junior's duties will consist of helping Heed write a book about the Coseys.
Readers learn that Heed lives in the same house together with Christine, and that she had inherited the house from Cosey's estate. However, we discover that the two women are embroiled in a legal proceeding, whereby Christine is suing Heed to reclaim her share in her grandfather's estate.
From this point onwards Morrison cleverly draws her readers into the story by peeking into all of the corners of Cosey's life, as well as the lives of the women who were connected to him in one way or another.

If readers expect a "feel good" ending, I am afraid they will be disappointed. However, on the other hand, when you do put the book down, you are tempted to re-read paragraphs or even entire chapters in the belief that perhaps you have missed out on something. No doubt, this is the brilliance of Morrison's writing and the challenge for the reader...


Rating:
Summary: Now, I'm hungry...
Review: Hungry, that is, for the next Morrison novel. While I found "Love" to be enjoyable, I feel like I have gotten a B+ paper from my (indisputably) star pupil. I'll mark her up to A- on the strength of "Paradise" alone, but in the next novel, I fully expect her to grab her sack, go to work, and "beat the field." I expect "Paradise," the milk, and the honey. The story told in "Love" revolves around a black-owned, black-operated seaside resort. While the temporal focus of the book is after the death of Bill Cosey (owner), the story incorporates regular flashbacks, so we get a chance to experience the living man as well as the women, children, and other men interacting with him. No matter; the women command the real attention. If you want to find out who's behind a nasty conflagration, whose heel-strokes alone strike fear in the heart, who digs a rich man's gold better than a '49er, she's likely to be found in the pages of a Morrison novel. The matriarch in "Love," Heed, serves well enough in her role. Indeed, it is only the fact that her glands are packed with good, strong, venom that allows her to stand next to the other characters we have enjoyed in other Morrison novels. Heed, however, cannot unseat a single one of her sisters. Now, I'm waiting for the woman who will make it abundantly clear that among Morrison creations, she will take first chair. In the end, I consider "Love" Morrison Light. If you want to experience full flavor, to lose track of time, to live (for just a moment) in the hearts, souls, and minds of her larger than life characters, best find your way to "Paradise."

Rating:
Summary: PUZZLING!!!
Review: While reading Love, at first I found it to be confusing and complicated and as I kept reading, found that the story gradually unfolded with relative understanding (more about understanding this work later). Reading anything by Morrison requires you to do just that "READ"; there will be NO speed reading Morrison if you want to acquire some gist of what she is writing about or all will be lost with vocabulary nuances that depart from the central thought-which is Morrison's trademark. I did enjoy reading Love for the fact that it does contain some rich prose that is digestible for mind consumption. There is so much story and character within this anemic novel that it is not fully expressed or told with clarity. With Love's storyline and plot there is no way this book should be 202 pages. The mysteriously written ending is rushed and after re-reading several passages several times to get closure, I still don't remotely know what happened at the hotel with Junior, Heed, and Christine; let alone the Romen situation, and also who is the other woman at the gravesite with Celestial??? If anyone can shed some light on this, please email me and put Love in the subject or IM me, because I'm still scratching my head. In short, the book is about Bill Cosey who is no doubt a pedophile and several women adored and worshipped the ground he walked on. Oh, what joy it is to read Toni Morrison!

Rating:
Summary: Two sides to every story
Review: LOVE is (at first) confusing with the constant switching of views; however, the more you read, the more clarity invoked. It's a story that requires your undivided attention or else you risk having to reread the story just to get the point lost. It's a lesson of what happens when people dwell more on what was wrong rather than what was right with another human being. It doesn't read like other Toni Morrison novels I've read; yet it still exudes her idiosyncratic depth. Overall, it was an enjoyable story and a recommended read.

Reviewed by Ess Mays
of The RAWSISTAZ Reviewers

Complete review can be found on our website...

Rating:
Summary: Love is delicious!
Review: As she's done in the past, Morrison not only entertains, but she educates and fascinates! I am a forever fan...
also recommended, anything by Bernice L. McFadden - Sugar, This Bitter Earth, The Warmest December and Loving Donovan.

Rating:
Summary: She's done it again...
Review: If you read and enjoyed any of Ms. Morrison's previous works, you'll love this one too. And if you haven't, this is as good a novel to start with as any. "Love" is about women whose lives are bound together by their relationship to Bill Cosey, even long after his death. Her language, imagery, and characters are memorable, and, as always, reading it was such a great experience.

My only complaint is that I would like to have known more about Celestial.

Rating:
Summary: Don't let the length fool you...
Review: At a little over 200 pages, "Love" is one of Toni Morrison's shortest novels (after "Sula") yet is as complex as anything she has ever written. It is essentially about the successful Bill Cosey and the effect he has on the women around him. Decades after his death, the young Junior arrives at the now defunct Cosey Hotel looking for work, and meets the women who have been impacted by Cosey. The novel's title is so important to understanding the book because it is the central character (of sorts); it's what drove the characters in the past and present and it's what shapes everyone's feelings toward eachother. In the book are many different variations on love: love borne from lust, from envy, from greed, from innocence, as well as from a pure source. Morrison continues to write in her beautiful prose and non-linear form, revealing the central mysteries of the story bit by little bit until the reader realizes what a grandiose novel this is. I fully reccomend this book to anybody who is interested in quality fiction. Keep in mind though, this book is quite a challenge.