Rating: 
Summary: Jazz in Writing
Review: "Jazz" (1992) is one of the best works by Toni Morrison, the first African-American woman awarded Nobel Prize for literature.The best way to read "Jazz" is to read it slowly, savour every line, every sentence, every mental picture it creates. It is a lyrical novel, where the story shifts back and forth in time -- expression of feelings, moods and thoughts has a priority over a plot. The story of love lost, searched and found on the background of 1920's Harlem creates an appealing, coloful tapestry. Morrison often uses "stream of conscoiusness" method of writing, first applied by Virginia Woolf. Dialogues, although rather scarce, are brisk, full of humanity (good and bad) and even spark with wisdom of common people. The narrator identifies with the characters, portrays them with affection and ultimate understanding. The story is marked with striking sense of detail, various motifs interchange and interweave -- just like in jazz music -- and the result is powerful. As with jazz music, "Jazz" the book is not a book for everyone. But once you come to appreciate the style, you can read it again and again and every time find something new. One is bound to agree with a reviewer in Cosmopolitan who related to "Jazz" as if it was "Shakespeare singing the blues."
Rating:
Summary: An Underappreciated Novel
Review: After having read this novel I can't believe all the negative reviews, most people claiming that the novel was too hard or difficult to follow. I've read 4 of Morrison's books (The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon, Sula and Beloved) and I'll have to say that enjoyed this one amensely and I pretty much read over a span of three days. It's not a difficult read, nor is it difficult to follow if you've read any of her before or read Hemmingway, Faulkner or Kerouac for that matter. On a second reading of any of Morrison's novels, you always come away with something new, as with any quality piece of literature. So I really don't buy into this idea that Morrison's novels, this one in particular are difficult to read. This being said, I found this novel to be a great pleasure, a story that's simple enough about a middle-aged married black couple The Traces in "the City" during 1920's the husband Joe Trace has a fling with a young girl named Dorcas Manfred whom he later kills in the middle of party though the girl's Aunt/Guardian doesn't press charges and the wife Violet "Violent" Trace tries to disfigure the dead girl in the casket at her funeral. That's basically it without giving away the novel. There is an almost sensual use of language here that tells the stories behind the story that is common in Morrison's novels that gives Jazz that particular kind of flavor that distinguishes it from Morrison's other works and makes this novel more than a pleasure to read. I highly recommend it!
Rating: 
Summary: Jazz's rhythm was hard to get into, but tied up beautifully.
Review: I found Jazz difficult to get into as the rhythm of the story was confusing at first. I wasn't immediately "lured in" like in Sula, the other book of Toni Morrison's that I have read. The style began flowing smoothly once I hit the midway point, when the story seemed to build and to be going somewhere. The second half was page-turning. I found the characters more understandable, drawn to their grief, intrigued by their quirks. It is a story of longing - for love, for proper parenting and for hope. A good, easy read with a lesson in patience - once you get to the end, you're glad you suffered through the slow beginning and learned the meaning of long-term commitment, as Morrison teaches throughout the book.
Rating: 
Summary: Jazz
Review: In this 1920's novel based on two African American's living in Harlem, the reader finds themselves fighting for certain sides in the story. After falling smittenly in love with one another (at a cotton crop farm) Joe and Violet married. They lived here for thirteen years and then decided to move to Baltimore. On the way here, they find "the City" (Harlem). Once in Harlem, Joe becomes a cosmetic salesman from door to door. He comes upon the house of Alice Manfred's house. Here also lives her 18 year old niece, Dorcas. Joe falls for Dorcas and begins asking a friend to borrow her house during the day for himself and Dorcas to use. For three months Joe sneaks around with Dorcas, while Violet is at home listening to her parrot sqawk "I LOVE YOU" over and over again. Shortly after, Joe finds Dorcas with another man, Acton. Joe is angered and kills Dorcas. At the funeral, Violet shows up and slashes the already dead girl in the face. Throughout the story, there are flashbacks of Joe and Violet's childhood, meeting, and marriage. Then they also go back to discuss how Joe came to meet Dorcas. Through all of this, Morrison becomes the voice of an unknown person and going inside people's heads. Violet begins to visit Dorcas' aunt and builds a friendship on with her. In the end, Violet and Joe's relationship is enthralled in love. There is some about "the City", it makes you love.
Rating:
Summary: Dark passion
Review: Inspired by a newspaper story where a woman stabbed a dead woman at the funeral, Morrison tackles obsession, vitriolic hatred manifested as marrings. The marring of a deep love by an affair, the marring of the mistress, the marring of Violet's reputation/identity by her actions throughout the community that once embraced her.
To defend, to attack a live mistress/sexual opponent is acceptable but when one's husband has killed hsi mistress to hold the love in amber, is madness. A madness that goes deeper than what we can imagine.
Or can we?
In Tar Baby, the topic was love and loving with White people as the background, a white canvas, if you will but here, it is Black on black canvas. Cry for freedom by traveling from the South as a loving couple, cry for release through a 50 year old man finding love with an 18 year old girl and then cry vengeance with a capital V for Violet. Hot like hot chocolate in hell, thsi book is jazz, hits its mark with the improvisation, the dance of the sentences that are no longer simply poetry but now notes, harmony, lyrics, melody dancing along the ceiling, on the wall as shadows, as figures entwined first 1 then 2 then 3 then 2 then a solitary one again. Bebop, bebop. 4 beat to 8 beat to 16 beat then to 8 then to 4. Improved as scat through Coltrane, a love supreme, a love supreme, a love supreme.
Rating:
Summary: Phenomenon
Review: Morrison has done it again. The story of a twisted love affair gone awry, Jazz takes you through the streets of an up and coming Harlem in the 1920s. It bares the souls and psyches of Violet, a 50-something black woman going through a midlife crisis, and her husband Joe, who falls in love with a teenage girl in an attempt understand his disjointed past. If you have read any of Toni Morrison's works, this book follows the exact same pattern of her others: no visible pattern at all, but somehow coming together throughout the various narratives in various times and places within history. Although many questions are left unanswered, you still feel as if you have been immersed in a dream, a fantastic journey into the past that you never want to end. Morrison's writing is both beautiful and complex. There literally are no words to describe it. There is no one else out there like Morrison. I suggest that first-time Toni Morrison readers start off with Sula, which is her shortest and least complex work, but still one of her greatest, and then pick up Jazz after you have read a few others including Beloved, Tar Baby, and Song of Solomon.
Rating:
Summary: Phenomenon
Review: Morrison has done it again. The story of a twisted love affair gone awry, Jazz takes you through the streets of an up and coming Harlem in the 1920s. It bares the souls and psyches of Violet, a 50-something black woman going through a midlife crisis, and her husband Joe, who falls in love with a teenage girl in an attempt understand his disjointed past. If you have read any of Toni Morrison's works, this book follows the exact same pattern of her others: no visible pattern at all, but somehow coming together throughout the various narratives in various times and places within history. Although many questions are left unanswered, you still feel as if you have been immersed in a dream, a fantastic journey into the past that you never want to end. Morrison's writing is both beautiful and complex. There literally are no words to describe it. There is no one else out there like Morrison. I suggest that first-time Toni Morrison readers start off with Sula, which is her shortest and least complex work, but still one of her greatest, and then pick up Jazz after you have read a few others including Beloved, Tar Baby, and Song of Solomon.
Rating:
Summary: Jazzalutely Wonderful!
Review: Morrison is masterful. While it took me a few pages to warm up to the story, once I was hooled I couldn't put it down. I just loved how the sotry was told through the point of view of each of the characters. Morrison's insight into Harmlem life is just astounding. I could almost smell the neighborhoods she was describing. I highly recommend this book.
Rating:
Summary: Rereadable
Review: The book is a kind of poetry. Every word of it is right. You have to figure out how to be welcoming and defensive at the same time in the city according to one of the characters. Violet and Joe Trace live on Lenox Ave. in Harlem. Violet went to Dorcas Manfred's funeral with a knife. This occurred in 1926. Later she acquired a picture of the girl so that she and Joe could look at it in their living room. Violet is an unlicensed beautician who works in the apartment or in the apartments of her customers. After the funeral Violet usually worked in other places where people took pity on her and permitted her to do their hair. Violet had listened to her grandmother, True Belle, tell Baltimore stories. After the funeral Violet threw out her birds. This left her without her routines, rituals. Joe and Violet met in Vesper County, Virginia in 1906. Dorcas moved to the city from East St. Louis where her parents had been killed in the riots. She lived with her Aunt Alice who disliked the music and felt it was responsible for most social ills. By the time she was eleven her whole life was unbearable. Alice Manfred worked hard to make her niece private, but she was no match for a city seeping music. Joe met Dorcas at Alice Manfred's place. Alice tells Violet sometime after Dorcas's death that she does not understand women with knives. Violet's father and mother had been dispossessed, in a sense driven off of the land. Her mother committed suicide just before one of the four or so times when her father returned to the family with funds. The important thing learned by Violet was never to have children. She had met Joe when she was doing a bad job of picking cotton. Joe did not want children either. Later on, though, Violet longed for a child. Dorcas was young but wise. She was Joe's personal sweet. People might say he treated Violet like a piece of furniture. He was born and raised in Vesper County in 1873. He was called Trace because his own parents had disappeared without a trace. When he went to school he told the teacher his name was Joseph Trace. His foster brother, Victory Williams, turned around in surprise and said the Williams parents would be mad. He told Victory that when his parents came back he would need a different name so they could pick him out among the seven or so children; but they never came for him. Dorcas had long hair and bad skin. When Joe was a teenager he encountered the person he believed was his mother, a wild woman, someone who was almost feral. This scared him. It made him work hard. Dorcas said that Joe made her sick. She had a new friend, Acton. Acton felt that Dorcas liked to deceive Mrs. Manfred, her Aunt Alice. Dorcas ws buried with a stolen opal ring on her finger.
Rating: 
Summary: Dazed and Confused
Review: This book deals with the story of a couple in New York City during the Harlem Renaissance. The book has many underlying themes and symbols throughout. It was difficult for me to draw the connections of the symbols to their meanings. While I read I had a hard time keeping up with the narritive because the scences changed rapidly. When I finished reading it I felt like I needed someone to come and explain all the symbolism used in the novel. However I do enjoy Morrison's descriptions of the city before and during the Harlem Reniassance and how jazz was an expression of Black's emotions during the time period. This was my first Morrison book and I was not too happy with the overall feeling I got but hopefully her other works are more clear cut.
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