Jazz (original 1992; edition 1992)

This book actually reads like jazz music. The dialogue, descriptions, structure - everything about it has a feeling of improvised rhythm and melody. ( )

Superbly written, Jazz is the tragic yet hopeful story of Joe and Violet. Born down in Virginia in the late 1800s, they move to "the city" (never named, but I'm guessing New York) when they are in their thirties. Life there for them is more different than they ever imagined, and they change for both better and worse.

Also, Jazz is the story of Dorcas, a confused teenage girl trying to wiggle her way out from under her strict aunt's thumb. Dorcas collides in a way with Joe and Violet that is horrible, yet will make you feel sympathy for everyone involved. ( )

One way or another, all of Toni Morrison's books are about how the lives of black women in America have been damaged by the consequences of slavery. But that doesn't mean they're all the same. Her characters, especially her women, are always unexpected and original in their conception. By the time she came to write Jazz, she had also developed a strong, individual and very engaging style of writing. It's a constant pleasure to read her, the narrator's voice keeps taking you by surprise with the images it uses and the leaps it takes from one topic to another. You never feel you're being lectured about African-American history, having the stories of hate and oppression rammed down your throat. All the same, the message is very clear.
As others have said, when you take a step back from the book you might find yourself wondering where the story has gone. It isn't made clear who the narrator is, and various crucial threads seem to cross arbitrarily, or are simply left dangling. But that doesn't seem to be a problem. All the illogicalities of the story somehow seem to make sense at the moment you come across them, and there's a suspicion at the back of your mind that it will all fit together somehow if you start again at the beginning. ( )

With a 1992 copyright, this has become a classic of modern literature borrowing elements from the improvisational flavor of jazz. Morrison weaves a path of all the essential elements of the human condition using prose at times bordering on the poetic, and at times a run-on spray of phrasing. This is one of those books to put back on a shelf and pull off to re-read sometime again in the future. ( )

This was my pick for book group: I've read some Toni Morrison before, and felt like reading something else of hers, and I was attracted to this book by the mention in a blurb about New York in 1920s. But I don't think life in the city, or more specifically life in New York in the 1920s was ultimately that central to the book; it was more about relationships and coping with things that life throws at you, and some of those are really difficult.

I think I might have to think about what I feel about the book, but just to mention it here before I forget, I never quite figured out who the occasionally surfacing first-person narrator was supposed to be, and whether that was something I should have seen. ( )