Rating: 
Summary: Jazz is music for the eyes
Review: Morrison is an amazing author. She is truly gifted. After reading all of her novels except Paradise, I must say I feel reaffirmed in my love for this author because of this particular novel. Jazz is a complex story that fully pushes Morrison's abilities as a writer. Her characterizations and beautiful wording put you right into the story. You become one of the characters. With this novel, Morrison has brought me back to her. I was a little unhappy with Tar Baby and even Beloved. Jazz has brought me back.
Rating:
Summary: A Reflection of the Time Period and the Music
Review: This time period known as the Harlem Renaissance, was a perfect place for Morrison to pick up from. She used the expressiveness and freedom of this time, to show the struggles within the culture, and the chaos, as the music of jazz can be at times. Jazz is a blend of so many different rhythms, beats and instruments and the "City" was a perfect place to house this breakthrough music and struggles among the characters as well. All in all, this is a book that is definitely worth a close read, and as always is an exemplary piece to showcase Morrison's talent as a well-rounded contemporary author of our time.
Rating:
Summary: Lots of rhythm
Review: Jazz, the book, reads just like jazz, the music, plays. You start off the story, repeat, layer, add a little more, repeat the original story, change it up a little bit, go to the bridge, repeat some more while adding some extra information and then bring it all together at the end. It helps to discuss this book with other people after you read it because it is difficult to understand how the smaller stories fit into the larger picture. But once you do, it all makes sense. I like reading about this time period of the Harlem Renaissance. I think Violet, one of the main characters, is aptly named. She represents "violence" in the book (she stabs a dead body in the middle of a funeral). I preferred this book to Beloved.
Rating:
Summary: A poignant, soaring, touching work of art
Review: As a child of fine artists and a classical and jazz musician, I had no idea or understanding as to why many of the churches- from the turn of the century to almost the present day in many areas- consistently referred to jazz as the devil's music, or dangerously secular, until after reading this book. Toni Morrison becomes the metaphor herself, along with her invented characters, as a story of love and passion, anger and rage, sorrow and grief, hunger and lonliness, acknowledgement, and quiet, earhty epiphany unfolds as uncontrollably as the tides,with all the simple complexity of a jazz riff- and with as much freedom from judgement. Toni Morrison's descriptive powers sweeping across the landscape of history and the landscape of the individual character's lives is frightening in its ability to overwhelm. She brings out the raw, triumphant humaness of each character with such lyricism and painful joy. The novel can at times feel like a giant denoument, yet its slowly building climaxes are what make it more than readable; they make it exciting, sublimely predictable and unpredictable simultameuosly. It almost makes one understand better why the story of Christ is called a "Passion"; passion, as exemplified in this novel, is not just a sexy or damaging thing, but also the way to come to know God.There are small pars of the novel that are a bit too detailed in the rendering of lesser character's lives. Yet her rendering of the time period- Harlem in the 20's, and the community is incredible. This is more, or different, than a novel. It is an epic poem- an epic jazz poem that has you hearing the music as it mildly, painfully, poignantly and triumphantly ends. Toni will not let you down with this one.
Rating:
Summary: It's a strange world
Review: "Jazz" by Toni Morrison is a story about a couple in their early fifties named Joe and Violet. Joe has an affair with an eighteen-year-old girl named Dorcas who he later kills. When Violet found out about it, she ran into the funeral ceremony and stabbed Dorcas's corpse. Violet later became friends with Alice, Dorcas's aunt. Therefore, Alice never brought up any charges against Joe or Violet. The story ends when Joe and Violet are apparently happily living together. This book was very odd but yet intruiging. The narrator, which is Dorcas's best friend has the ability to see both sides of the issue. Sometimes she agrees with Violets thought, and sometimes she doesn't. The narrator is able to express Violets thought thoroughly. One of the best things about the book is that the narrator describes Violets personality very well. This book was challenging to understand, so I recommend this book to someone who wants to challenge themselves with an intruiging book. This book has a very defined tone throughout the story that keeps the reader hooked. "Jazz" is unquestionably a great piece of work.
Rating:
Summary: JAZZ a very good book
Review: I choose to read Jazz. I had never heard of Toni Morrison before and I had no idead of all the great awards she had won for previous books. I choose to read this book simply because of the first paragragh. To the average reader this seemed interesting. I finished this book and it's not bad to read, its dry in the middle but the end is real good. There are so many characters you sometimes forget who is who. For instance where did the Golden boy come from it was like he jumped in from another book! But when he did appear towards the end of the book, everything seemed interesting again. My best part of the book was when Dorcas was the narrator. Where she seemed to be describing her own death. A very good book indeed. But I was confused of what it was really about. So could someone email me and tell me the main themes because I would really like to understand the book.I am reading it for the second time and hopefully I might understand it better.
Rating: 
Summary: wonderful book, but read it twice
Review: A beautiful, haunting novel, but I think it needs to be read more than once. The characters are elusive; I kept wanting to know more about them, especially Golden Gray, Vera Louise, and Wild. Perhaps Morrison is saying that love is elusive, and so is the author's relationship to the characters he or she creates, as we finally realize that the "book" is itself the narrator. Other themes weave in and out of the story like melodies: the relationship between parent and child, abandonment, and the search for identity. The book is told in a lyrical style that can be appreciated even more fully when read aloud. Morrison is truly ahead of her time.
Rating:
Summary: Another great Morrison read
Review: In line witb Toni Morrison's tradition of superb fiction tomes, Jazz is a work that is too complex to produce a universal interpretation. The genius of Morrison's work is the personal relationship between the reader and the subject matter that her novels compel. Interpretation is purposefully subjective. In Jazz, Morrison manages to accomplish a literary feat: somehow capturing the history, essence, and character of a genre of music and translating it into literature. The novel "Jazz", is, like the music, seductive yet melancholy, spirited yet unpretentious, and is a simultaneous diatribe against and celebration of life. "Jazz" does not attempt to offer a rational explanation of the seemingly bizarre behavior of the main protagonists; instead, Jazz attempts to delve further into the human consciousness, into the cancatenation of events which shape (and sometimes warp) the human mind; Jazz attempts to highlight the pepetual change which constitutes life. Therefore, I had no trouble understanding orphan Dorcas' "wild ways" and unimaginable selfishness, nor Joe's neverending "hunt" for his mother, which culminated in Dorcas' shooting, nor Violet's possessiveness, grounded in her enormously unstable childhood. Like its musical counterpart, the novel "Jazz" is a work of genius. Would that all novels evoke such a profound personal impact.
Rating:
Summary: A Perfect Novel
Review: I have to thank my English professor, Prof. Hepburn, for telling me to read this book. Ms. Morrison has always been an unusual and gifted stylist but I think that the theme and interwoven plotlines of "Jazz" bring out the fluidity and cleverness of her writing. Each mini-story is a repetition of another story, but in such a gracefully twisted way. Out of all her novels, I would have to say that "Jazz" is the most detached. However, it is not passionless! Each character throbs with hate and fear and love but depicted in such a way as not to exhaust you with their emotions. If I could give it 10 stars, I would!
Rating: 
Summary: Picture It: Harlem, 1920s, Geezer Kills Teen With Impunity
Review: Toni Morrison is one of the most brilliant writers of this century, but this book is a mere shadow of her usual ability. Again, Morrison tries to show how people can bear the unbearable and the twisting effects of it. But I think a more fitting title for this book would have been "Complacency". The characters in this book are so stalwart in their misery that not even murder can compel them to action or change. I almost got the feeling that Morrison was offering the victim as a warning, like: "that's what you get for being a slutty girl. Don't ever try be vibrant." This story had the opposite feeling of jazz, for jazz soars and falls with new times and new constantly-improvised melodies.
|
