A strange story with odd characters. The kind that makes you feel queasy and gives you a headache. Silly events. What's the point and what's the use of knowing the ridiculous details about the lives of four ridiculous women in a writing style that is even more strange and more exciting for the reader. I don't recognize a small or a great writer until I read for myself. I don't care if it gets everyone's approval and five stars. I gave it one star after hesitation and thinking. This story made me happy when I finished it. I read Virginia Woolf and I read James Joyce but I enjoyed despite their innovative and sometimes difficult style but there is one literature and characters that develop. The translator helped the writer practice the secret habit on us within the book.

Young people, Lord. Do they still call it infatuation? That magic ax that chops away the world in one blow, leaving only the couple standing there trembling? Whatever they call it, it leaps over anything, takes the biggest chair, the largest slice, rules the ground wherever it walks, from a mansion to a swamp, and its selfishness is its beauty. – Toni Morrison, Love

It's almost September and I've managed to keep my Morrison-a-month reading streak alive. Eight Morrison's later and she never fails to surprise me, even though these are rereads. I enjoyed Love, a well-written book with a lot of fodder for discussion. The strange thing is I don't think I've ever heard anyone mention it. I wonder why it doesn't have the same appeal as some of her other books?

Love begins with our narrator introducing us to the coast community the book is set in. She talks about the past in nostalgic tones, how things have changed, and how things haven't changed. The main story itself is centered around the legend Bill Cosey, a black entrepreneur, and the women in his life who fight for his attention: his (very) young wife, daughter-in-law, grand-daughter and a few others. Even though Cosey has been deceased for a couple of decades, he is still a very strong, disturbing presence in the lives of these women.

This is a sad story of misunderstandings, bitterness, cruelty, hurt and anger. The three women share a house and we aren't sure why there is so much hatred between them. Morrison reveals things slowly and in a non-linear manner, and I'm left wondering how on earth women's lives can be fulfilling if they are centred solely around men, especially when this competition is encouraged, which, in this book, resulted in very strong feelings. Hate does that. Burns off everything but itself, so whatever your grievance is, your face looks just like your enemy's. Finally they stopped, moved into acid silence, and invented other ways to underscore bitterness….Like friendship, hatred needed more thank physical intimacy; it wanted creativity and hard work to sustain itself.

When it comes to Morrison's writing, what stands out to me most are her descriptions of things, in particular how she uses colour. It's often a short poetic respite from the tough subject matter she writes. Jade and sapphire waves fight each other, kicking up enough foam to wash sheets in. An evening sky behaves as though it's from another planet– one without rules, where the sun can be plum purple if it wants to and clouds can be red as poppies.
This was an emotional whirlwind of a book and Morrison takes us in so many different directions, down many paths of discoveries. There is plenty of food for thought in this one: families, their secrets and their hurts. The problem for those left alive is what to do about revenge–how to escape the sweetness of its rot. So you can see why families make the best enemies. They have time and convenience to honey-butter the wickedness they prefer. Shortsighted, though.

4.5 — I really, really enjoyed this.

The characters in this story are complex, with their own unique motivations that drive their actions and decisions.

What makes it even more fascinating is the really interesting way in which the story is woven together.

The author has masterfully crafted a narrative that keeps the reader engaged from beginning to end.

Each character's story line intersects and combines in a way that creates a rich and detailed tapestry.

The complexity of the characters and the clever way the story is told make this a truly enjoyable read.

I found myself completely immersed in the world of the story, and I can't wait to see what the author comes up with next.

Overall, this is a great piece of work that I would highly recommend to anyone looking for an engaging and thought-provoking read.

Holy hell.

I did not enjoy this book. This book is not entertainment at all. It is a gut wrenching piece of pure raw honesty about how life is.

My insides are sour. I can feel the blood in my veins. My heart is pounding. Be warned that it is full of triggers. It might be best to keep that in mind for those who are sensitive to them.

Shit. I can't even get my words out. Nothing made sense. And then it all made sense. And now I feel sick. I didn't enjoy reading this book.

It wasn't like my favourites, the sweet magical stories about abnormally bad circumstances being overcome by average, but secretly special, people. There's no feel-good.

But it is also not Virginia Andrews-y or Picoult-y where all these crazy unbelievable bad things happen and you are able to remain sane because "that's crazy". This was not crazy. This was real.

And I cannot escape the truth that Toni Morrison's work is incredibly important. Her words have the power to make us face the harsh realities of life, to make us feel the pain and the struggle.

Although I didn't enjoy this book in the traditional sense, I know that it has made an impact on me. It has made me think, and it has made me question.

Maybe that's the true beauty of Toni Morrison's writing. It forces us to look beyond the surface and see the world for what it really is.

When the lives of children are interrupted by the lives of adults.

Love is Toni Morrison's eighth out of eleven novels. It is her least read and one of her least-liked books. I'm not entirely sure why this is the case. After all, it features her usual brilliant writing, with characters that seem as real as life itself, and a story that Faulkner or Marquez would have been proud to claim. However, on the other hand, it is a dark and twisted tale. Although it is a relatively short book, around 200 pages, it is a slow read. Every sentence demands the reader's full attention. I found it accessible, albeit slow, and a much more engaging read than her previous novel, Paradise.

The centerpiece of the book appears to be a charismatic black entrepreneur, Bill Cosey. But the real story lies in the spokes formed by the women he impacts and their web of relationships as they interact with one another, for better or worse, for good or bad. Here, black women bear the burden. The story encompasses various elements such as sex, ghosts, feuds, broken connections, wisdom, and long histories. It's easy to forget that almost all of Toni Morrison's novels were historical fiction. It's also important to note that unlike some "great" writers whose novels were merely highly embellished autobiographies (and who ran out of material when they exhausted their personal biographies), she actually wrote fiction, inventing stories and histories that emerged from and shaped the American experience, a story that is all too rarely told. The writing in Love is simply beautiful.

The Difference Between a Well-Written Book and an Enjoyable Read.

Opening the book, even though one doesn't want to. The characters, mostly exaggerated and dangerous for each other. Situations where they are cruel or something cruel happens to them. The titular love that I missed while reading. The seemingly reconciliatory ending was hardly that for me because it was again based on the sacrifice of a woman. Too much pain and suffering, too much violence and humiliation. No hope anywhere. Unfortunately, as a reader, I can't bear this well.

This book, despite being well-written in terms of language and structure, fails to provide an enjoyable reading experience. The overly intense and often disturbing nature of the story makes it a difficult read. The lack of a positive or hopeful element leaves the reader feeling drained and dissatisfied. While some may appreciate the depth and complexity of the themes explored, for me, it was just too much.

In conclusion, a well-written book doesn't necessarily mean it will be an enjoyable read. The content and the emotions it evokes play a crucial role in determining the overall reading experience. I would rather choose a book that offers a more balanced and uplifting story, one that leaves me with a sense of hope and inspiration.

Morrison expertly directs a cacophony of voices, presenting hazy facts and anachronistic timelines that seamlessly converge into the ever-evolving and multi-faceted meaning of “love”.
At the heart of the story stands the ghostly figure of Bill Cosey, the iconic owner of a prestigious hotel on the East Coast in the forties. Orbiting around his powerful absence are the shifting testimonies of different women who held significant roles in his life… and his death.

Can a man, grieving for the loss of his wife and son, find solace in youth without crossing the line into child molestation?
What kind of love binds two girls to a lifetime of malicious rivalry, jealousy, and yearning that stems from misunderstanding and shame?
How many women toiled in the shadows, adoring the public icon of a man who was both evil and saint, while racial discrimination tore families apart and exploited their children with complete impunity?
Morrison’s prose is like a mournful chant, lamenting the fatigue of living, the burdens of loving, and the permanent scars left by loss. The offbeat lyricism from an omniscient narrator, who remains anonymous until the final pages of the book, sheds light on the obscure rhythms of this fragmented puzzle.
The man remains elusive: a friend, a benefactor, a father, a lover, and an abuser. His haunting presence diminishes as the fates of those who loved him are resolved, regardless of the past.
Conversely, the women in his life become perfectly delineated; their voices achieve such perfect clarity that they challenge moral distinctions and years of censure and repressed silence to achieve communal vindication.
And love, with all its cruel beauty, triumphs over despair, even when life is but a tenuous reflection of the things that could never be.

Two ghosts and a pedophile as central characters? That's a combination that just doesn't sit well with me at all.

The idea of having such disturbing and inappropriate elements as the main focus of a story is something I can't bring myself to embrace.

Ghosts can be spooky and add an element of mystery and the supernatural, but when paired with a pedophile, it takes the whole concept to a level that is simply unacceptable.

I prefer stories that offer more positive and engaging themes, ones that can capture my imagination and make me feel something other than discomfort and revulsion.

This particular combination of characters is a definite turn-off for me, and I'll be looking elsewhere for my reading or viewing entertainment.

Book #8 and the final read for Black History Month, 2024. However, of course, I will keep reading black writers forever!

“Take me by the hand…either she doesn’t know about me or has forgiven me for my solution. But once in a while her voice is so full of longing, I can’t help it. I want something back. Something just for me” (Morrison 203).

I have read this Toni Morrison novel several times during the last 20-odd years since its publication in 2003. Since it was a bestseller in my youth, I picked up a copy and delved into her dark tale on the themes of love. Later, as an adult after reading “Sula” for the first time, I realized that this is a darker exploration of the complexities of friendship that began with that book.

“Love” continues on Morrison’s signature themes of the complications of loving too much, the dark recesses of the human condition, and the toxic nature of masculinity. It also shows how societies and communities scapegoat people they cannot pin down, often using black girls as examples of the outsider in her literary discourse. “People with no imagination feed it with sex—the clown of love. They don’t know the real kinds, the better kinds, where losses are cut and everybody benefits” (Morrison 63).

My first attempts at reading “Love” ranged from feeling bewildered to dizzy. Sometimes I felt like I missed something. It might be the Toni Morrison novel that confused me the most, as I did not feel a connection to it initially. It felt disjointed and haphazard, and for a time, it was the Morrison work I wanted to disown after having loved everything else she wrote.

However, I can now safely write that I think this is a dark, underrated gem of a book that needs to be rediscovered and treasured like much of her early, celebrated work. I've upped my original 2 stars to 3 stars (in 2015) and now, 5 stars. In this reassessment of this baffling, yet intoxicating novel, it might be the most obtuse and interesting one in her oeuvre. Once again riffing on ghost stories, the supernatural, and broken sisterhood, it’s a dazzling feat.

The story is set in the surreal Up Beach. The town patriarch, Bill Cosey, has died, leaving behind his widow Heed, whom he married when she was only 11 years old. His granddaughter Christine and his daughter-in-law May all live on his estate, bickering and fighting over his legacy and, while he was alive, for his attention. His first wife Julia and their son Billy had both died, so it’s only Christine and May left, alone with the haughty Heed.

L is the cook of Cosey’s estate, acting as the narrator and commenting on the events that happened in Up Beach, set before and after the Civil Rights Movement, in an all-black seaside community somewhere on the East Coast. The setting, often shifting from 1995 back to the 1940s, in this dreamlike world where there are almost no white people, of parties and jazz, is often surreal and expressionistic.

I say 1995 because the character Junior is 19 and born in 1975. Then finally, rounding out Morrison’s dramatis personae are Vida and Sandler Gibbons, who worked for Cosey. Their grandson Romen, a strapping 14-year-old boy, becomes involved with Junor Viviane, a young woman released from prison and hired by Heed Cosey to help write their history and draw up a will that makes Christine unable to get anything.

All these characters have been manipulated by Cosey in some way or another, and his lover, Celestial, confirms this. Heed and Christine were once childhood friends whose love for each other fell apart after Heed married her grandfather as a kid. Cosey always loved Celestial most. Finally, Romen, being a child himself like Heed, is manipulated by an older woman (though their age difference is only 5 years apart compared to Cosey and Heed, who was only 11).

Pedophilia and the rape of children should never be accepted, but in Morrison’s world, characters’ motivations are always complex and ambiguous. This, I think, is often a metaphor for the notion that human relationships and race are always intersected in ways that might seem perverted to the outsider but are the reality of what her characters and her ideas often feel. “A clear sight of the world as it was, barren, dark, ugly with remorse…motives pointless” (Morrison 132).

In Heed’s case, she married Cosey in order to remain close to Christine and to escape a life of poverty. It’s also after having been molested by Bill himself that the shame of having experienced perverted love is why she marries him, and Christine knows that he’s a dirty old man too. Their inability to discuss and process sexual trauma is the wedge that drives the women apart.

Somehow, Heed’s tenacity reminded me of Laila from “A Thousand Splendid Suns,” also an adolescent who married a much older man in order to survive and protect her dignity. Except Cosey doesn’t treat Heed with the indignities that Rasheed imposes on his wives.

The language in “Love” is gorgeous, as expected when reading a Toni Morrison novel. It bites with the white-hot intensity of emotions that jump off the page, often simmering in heartbreak. The story of how Heed and Christine’s friendship fell apart is one of the saddest instances in this book, of how it all went wrong. “They shared stomachache laughter, a secret language, and knew as they slept together that one’s dreaming was the same as the other one’s” (Morrison 132).

The exquisite finale that showcases their final scenes together is as haunting as any ending she’s written in past books, a jazzy riff that both reconciles and releases love and pain. As Heed and Christine’s time comes to an end, so does their toxic love. Ironically, though it begins with a lot of sex and lust, the love that evolves between Junior and Romen becomes the purest love of the story, and love is free to continue, without Bill Cosey.

Love, Toni Morrison

Love is a captivating story that revolves around Bill Cosey, a charming yet deceased hotel owner. It delves into the lives of those who were influenced by him, even long after his passing. The main characters, Christine, his granddaughter, and Heed, his widow, are the same age and were once friends. However, forty years after Cosey's death, they have become bitter enemies, sharing his mansion. Morrison employs a split narrative, jumping back and forth in time, gradually revealing the full story. The characters in the novel all have a connection to the infamous Bill Cosey. Toni Morrison, the Nobel Prize-winning author, creates a delicate, humorous, thrilling, and impactful work. The novel Love is about six women: Mi, Christine, Heed, Junior, Vida, and Il. Five of these women model their lives after Bill Cosey, a wealthy and famous hotel owner. Cosey represents the hidden desires of these women to find a father, husband, lover, protector, and friend. Even after his death, his presence still casts a shadow over their lives. Amidst this, Cosey, who is the center of these women's lives, is also a prisoner of other forces. He has a troubled past and is imprisoned by a woman named Celestial (Il). The author's encounter with the nature of love, lust, the overwhelming power of love over humans, and the pain and longing that love conceals, along with rich characters and remarkable scenes, invites the reader to look at their pasts with a new perspective.

For the past few years, I have been engaged in the process of rereading Toni Morrison’s novels. She was a prolific writer who penned 12 novels, and Love was the eighth in her remarkable oeuvre. Each time I embark on this rereading journey, it brings with it a profounder understanding of her profound meanings and the intricate tapestry of life and love.

I first delved into Love in 2004, just a year after its publication. Over the last twenty years, I have witnessed and experienced a plethora of permutations of love. As we are all aware, rereading has the power to unveil hitherto unseen aspects of both books and life. This is because, as the decades pass by, we are both the same individuals at our core and yet have changed in countless ways.

My reading log from 2004 vividly attests to the fact that I was deeply enamored with Love. I grasped the essence of how two women, who were once the closest of friends in their childhood, were brutally forced apart by certain adults. This cruel separation caused their love for each other to mutate into hate.

In a narrative fashion that has now become almost commonplace today but was far less so two decades ago, the story deftly jumps back and forth between the present and the past. As it does so, it gradually reveals the series of events that drove these two females apart and then, in a twist of fate, brought them back together. I noted in my remarks at that time that it was perhaps her unique way of telling the story that招致了Ms Morrison so many scathing reviews.

As I grow older, I find that my perception and understanding of my own life and my past undergo regular transformations. This occurs as I engage in the act of writing about it and as I continuously read and learn more and more about life and the world around us. Some days, I am left wondering whether I am attaining more clarity or陷入更深的困惑. Life is indeed a messy affair. Kids, for the most part, have virtually no inkling about why the adults in their lives behave the way they do, and they have even less control over the events that unfold.

The novel Love makes this abundantly clear and starkly portrays the tragedy inherent in it all. This is a recurring theme in Morrison’s writing. She masterfully combines elements such as racism, the ambiguous effects of integration on Black lives, economic upheavals, and political disputes to present a vivid and complex scene.

Bill Cosey was a highly successful and wealthy individual who owned a renowned hotel and resort for the colored people of the East Coast. His establishment boasted the best food, the most enchanting music, and the most luxurious accommodations. However, he was also a man who was crazy for women of all kinds and was slightly less than honest when it came to matters of money. When he passed away, the two women at the heart of this story were left to engage in a bitter fight over a substantial inheritance.

Having written this much, I am suddenly struck by the realization of how much these conflicts bear a resemblance to the conflicts that occur among white people. Could this be, in part, what Toni Morrison is试图传达? It very well could be. Human beings, regardless of the color of their skin or their social standing, are all ensnared in the intricate web of life’s complications. If we could truly come to terms with this fundamental truth, perhaps we might be able to envision and create a different, more harmonious world.

In any case, we all love at our own peril. Every single time!

Dammit to hell, Toni Morrison.

Why on earth does she do this to her readers?

I truly need to read this remarkable author more frequently than just once every seven years. Each time I pick up one of her novels, I'm reminded of the powerful impact she has, even though I always seem to forget in the interim. It's as if she doles out a beating, but does so with her worn yet lovely velvet gloves, making it all the more poignant.

Here's a vivid pictorial representation of what it's like to read a Toni Morrison novel, and this one is no exception.

At first, it seems so lovely, like a gentle stroll. There's an undercurrent of discomfort, but you just pull your jacket tighter and tell yourself you'll be fine. It's all worth it for the beautiful view that Morrison presents.

However, then comes a crack, a loud snap, and the ground shakes a bit. You turn around and AAAAGGGGGHHHHHHH! Everything is suddenly broken and buried, covered in a breath-robbing heaviness. It's so cold, so dark, and so horribly disorienting.

And then, just when you think it couldn't get any worse, the sun comes out and the dogs arrive. But who the hell cares at this point because you're already too emotionally drained.

Oh my god, it's like this every single time I read Morrison.

From here on out, I'm going to be all ranty and start discussing the plot. So, if you don't want any spoilers, you might as well move on to another review instead of opening this can of spoils.

This is a ghost story, but you don't know that for sure until you're done reading. It starts with L's memories and then leads to a young woman answering an ad placed by one of the crazy old Cosey women.

There are two crazy old Cosey women: Christine Cosey, who was once beautiful and is a fine cook, and Heed Cosey, who is supposedly the meanest woman in town. The story weaves in and out of the lives of these characters, along with others like Junior, Vida, Sandler, Roman, and Mae.

Bill Cosey, the central figure, was a local celebrity who ran the swanky Cosey Hotel. His legacy is told through the eyes of those who knew him, both his admirers and those he ruined.

The imagery in the beginning is excellent, setting the stage for the complex and emotional story that unfolds. As the different perspectives are presented, you start to piece together the puzzle and understand the true nature of the relationships and the events that have taken place.

But be warned, this story is not for the faint of heart. It's a rollercoaster ride of emotions, and by the end, you'll feel completely exhausted.

I must go have a lie-down now. I'm worn out from this powerful and thought-provoking novel.

(Photo of elk and snowy mountains courtesy of the Estes Park tourist website, swipered without permission)

(P.S. - It's idiosyncratic, perhaps, to use imagery of avalanches to describe Morrison's works, which more often take place in the American south where there are no avalanches. Hurricanes and tsunamis, while more appropriate to the settings, didn't seem as comparable since there's warning and evacuation time before those events, and also because I live near avalanches and understand them far better than I do lowland water disasters.)