Click on a thumbnail to go to Google Books.
Loading... Love. (original 2003; edition 2004)by Toni Morrison
Work InformationLove by Toni Morrison (2003)
2023 (9) Loading...
Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. Love is the story of several women whose lives were tied to Bill Cosey, owner of a seaside resort hotel catering to Black clientele. Cosey is dead and the hotel is no longer a going concern. His widow, Heed, daughter-in-law May, and granddaughter Christine now live in the hotel and wage constant battles for power over one another. Heed has also hired a young woman named Junior as her secretary to help write a book about her life, a project the other two women simultaneously scorn and fear. A woman named “L,” part of the resort in the old days, appears occasionally to provide insight on the lives of the characters. Love unfolds in a non-linear and often disjointed fashion in Morrison’s trademark style. Reading her work is like doing a jigsaw puzzle, starting with a jumble of disconnected pieces and gradually finding the connections and binding it all together around the edge. That’s what makes her books so interesting, so I won’t reveal any of those connections in this review. Her language is exquisite, and the “reveals” expertly done. I love when a book elicits an “aha” response, and this one did that. And yet, I struggled to identify the central theme of the work and the meaning of the title. There were many forms of love in evidence, some healthier than others. The bonds between the women were powerful in their unique way. Morrison also wove in commentary on civil rights issues. But after thinking about it for a few days, I just can’t quite tie it all together. In [Love], Morrison slowly reveals the relationships of multiple women with each other and with a successful Black man and hotel owner named Bill Cosey. The women are his child-wife, his granddaughter, and his daughter-in-law. At heart of the novel is everyone's relationship with the deceased Bill Cosey, but more importantly to me, their relationships with each other. Cosey's wife, Heed, and his granddaughter Christine are the same age and were friends before Cosey took Heed as his wife. Their relationship is central to the book. This is a brief novel, only 200 pages, and there are still things I didn't quite understand. I'm hoping our group discussion will help me sort some of it out. I also felt that, because it was brief, though Morrison put in some larger cultural issues like the Civil Rights movement and correctional/prison systems, those didn't get explored as deeply as she explores greater societal issues in other novels. I also was a little perplexed by the title. I don't see much Love in this novel - more abuse, jealousy, and possessiveness. Maybe it was ironic. I always enjoy and respect Morrison's writing, but this novel will rank in the middle for me. It's no [Beloved], or [Paradise], or [Song of Solomon]. I always seems to struggle a bit at the start of a Morrison novel. She often drops the reader into the heart of the story, introducing elements and characters, without making the connections or providing the context one needs for a coherent picture. But what she is so good at is writing a novel where these pieces are slowly teased out, threads of a story meet up with others, characters develop, connections are illuminated, and the reader finally begins to see and understand the complex web she is weaving as a whole. Love took a bit longer than usual to show itself to me to the point where I felt like I was "getting" it. But once I did, the book was difficult to put down. At heart, it's about the various forms of love that can shape and distort a life, and about the opposite face of the same coin - the enmity and hatred that can do the same. It's a story of several women who orbit around one man and how they are both drawn to and repulsed by him, and what those conflicting emotions do to them and to their relationship with each other. It is barely 200 pages in length but Morrison can do more in those pages than most authors do in twice the number. AwardsDistinctionsNotable Lists
Fiction.
Literature.
HTML:From the internationally acclaimed Nobel laureate comes a richly conceived novel that illuminates the full spectrum of desire. May, Christine, Heed, Junior, Vida even L: all women obsessed by Bill Cosey. More than the wealthy owner of the famous Cosey Hotel and Resort, he shapes their yearnings for father, husband, lover, guardian, friend, yearnings that dominate the lives of these women long after his death. Yet while he is both the void in, and the centre of, their stories, he himself is driven by secret forces a troubled past and a spellbinding woman named Celestial. This audacious vision of the nature of love its appetite, its sublime possession, its dread is rich in characters and striking scenes, and in its profound understanding of how alive the past can be. A major addition to the canon of one of the worlds literary masters. This is coast country, humid and God fearing, where female recklessness runs too deep for short shorts or thongs or cameras. But then or now, decent underwear or none, wild women never could hide their innocence a kind of pitty-kitty hopefulness that their prince was on his way. Especially the tough ones with their box cutters and dirty language, or the glossy ones with two-seated cars and a pocketbook full of dope. Even the ones who wear scars like Presidential medals and stockings rolled at their ankles cant hide the sugar-child, the winsome baby girl curled up somewhere inside, between the ribs, say, or under the heart. from Love. No library descriptions found. |
Current DiscussionsNonePopular covers
Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
Is this you?Become a LibraryThing Author. |
Starting from a present-day situation, the reader is given more and more details about each character. They are not only three dimensional, they are flesh and blood and memories and feelings, reminiscing about hardships and traumas with an indifference, probably to protect themselves. However, these shields fall away once they open themselves up to vulnerability again.
Nothing is certain, no one is good or bad, it is impossible to root for anyone but one character, who doesn't even play the most central part. They are human, with flaws and virtues, strengths and weaknesses, very well understood and accepted and loved by the overwhelming empathy of the author. I will certainly miss this wise calm voice for some time. ( )