Love

Love is a book that explores several unexpected facets of one of the strongest emotions human beings experience. It is also, like all Toni Morrison books, incredibly well written and exceedingly rich in character development and descriptions. Some of the analogies and comparisons she makes to describe certain events in the book simply blew me away. In a word this book and Ms. Morrison are incredible. I would highly recommend both to anyone that hasn't experienced them. Yes, she can be a difficult author to read. However anything worth having is worth putting a bit of effort into. Furthermore, this book is a bit of an easier read than others she's written and would be a good introduction to her work.

I have only read one other novel by Toni Morrison, the Pulitzer winning "Beloved". That is a high standard for any novel to be compared to, but as I started reading "Love" I forgot about anything else and was wrapped up in Morrison's prose. This is not the sort of novel I was able to read with anything distracting in the background. I had to turn off the radio and whatever tv was playing and focus on the book in the quiet, and with each successive chapter, I was enraptured by the book.This is the story of many things, the most prominent being love. Rather than blandly stating that one character loves another, Morrison spends time developing the relationships between various characters and the different way their loves take shape. This is not all romantic love. We have the love between a husband and a wife, a father and a daughter, lust between teenagers, and various shadings of each. The central figure in this novel is Bill Cosey, a former hotel owner, now deceased. We are given perspectives from Heed, Vida, Christine, Junior, L, Celestial, May, Romen, and Sandler, and together, these characters create a beautiful novel. This is not so much a case of Morrison telling a single story than it is Morrison revealing characters and creating a little section of our world that feels real by the time she is done. Toni Morrison truly is one of the most powerful voices in American Fiction.

No living author with the possible exception of Gabriel Garcia Marquez has better opening lines than Toni Morrison. For dead writers, she ranks with Melville, Camus and Tolstoy for that honor. LOVE begins with these words: "The women's legs are spread wide open, so I hum. Men grow irritable, but they know it's all for them. They relax. Standing by, unable to do anything but watch, is a trial, but I don't say a word." When Morrison finishes her story about 200 pages later, we have met a host of unforgettable characters, mostly women-- Heed, Christine, May, Junior, Vida, L, all who are obsessed with one Bill Cosey. I always marvel at the strength of Morrison's characters. Although they often face untold hardships, they seldom whine and often prevail. As usual, Morrison's plot is not linear but goes back and forth in time from the Civil Rights era to before and after that time. We get the story little by little and ultimately get the whole story, and what a story it is.The book obviously is about love. Although there are other kinds of love here-- erotic love, lust masquerading as love-- the central love is that between two children, a love that was ruined by grownups. Years later as adults Heed and Christine finally get around to talking about their lost opportunities: "We could have been living our lives hand in hand instead of looking for Big Daddy everywhere."There are memorable lines throughout the novel. Christine opines that "her last good chance for happiness [is] wrecked by the second oldest enemy in the world: another woman." Cosey says that "you can live with anything if you have what you can't live without." Finally, Sandler in a lecture to his teenage son gives a moving tribute to women: "A woman is an important somebody and sometimes you win the triple crown: good food, good sex, and good talk. Most men settle for any one, happy as a clam if they get two. But listen, let me tell you something. A good man is a good thing, but there is nothing in the world better than a good good woman. She can be your mother, your wife, your girlfriend, your sister, or somebody you work next to. Don't matter. You find one, stay there."On of the joys of living now is reading a new Toni Morrison novel. May she live long and write many more!

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 dude if ever there was one, ran a ritzy seaside resort for African Americans in the wild and wooly 40s and 50s. But now he's dead, and the story becomes a portrait of his power, unusual for black men of his times, and its effect on those who came after him.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.

I can never really put my finger on it but whenever I've finished a Morrison novel, I'm left nursing a range of emotions from awe to despair. I'm left pondering what the book was all about, which forces me to exam more closely the themes, characters, and conflicts of the novel. The end result of this closer examination is always a better understanding of self and a richer appreciation for others.In Morrison's latest novel, the author examines the consequences of perhaps the most sought after emotion in human existence. Love, and its various faces - hate lust, envy - is set during the 1950's in an ocean side town where Bill Cosey owns a resort that caters to middle and upper class blacks. Heed, Christine and May are the primary characters. L, a narrating spirit and former employee of the resort, provides background and insight into the other characters motives in a voice that resonates with truth and love. Heed and Christine share a pure unconditional love that bonds the two in friendship until Bill, Christine's grandfather, takes Heed as his bride. Bill, at age 52, purchases the 11-year-old Heed from her parents in hopes of obtaining a pure and virginal vessel to bear him a son to replace the one he lost to death. May, Christine's mother, sees Heed as a threat to the family's upper-class lifestyle and does everything in her power to disgrace the child bride. The love once shared by Heed and Christine is quickly turned into a life consuming hatred as May enlists Christine in her campaign against Heed. Morrison unleashes, with grace and assurance, the literary skills she has cultivated over the course of her career. She is a master at telling a story from the inside out. Love, with wonderfully drawn characters and imagistic prose that nearly leaps from the page, is a splendid compliment to the author's literary canon. The novel is thin but deep. The only thing better than reading a Morrison novel is having a few people to discuss it with. Curl up and enjoy!