Summary:
As she reveals new depths of connection between them, Morrison brings these characters together to squabble over Bill Cosey and his estate, giving LOVE the tone of a soap opera --- "just another story made up to scare wicked females and correct unruly children, a story that shows how brazen women can take a good man down." And too often Morrison seems too willing to let LOVE descend to the level of "pointless malice," which infects her prose and her themes with soap-opera formulas.
Certain phrases stand out against the well-crafted mellifluousness of Morrison's otherwise remarkably restrained prose. Hackneyed clichés pop up and stand out, like "When Christine opened the door she found Ernie locked in the arms of the staff sergeant's wife." Elsewhere, Morrison painfully overstates the novel's meaning, such as when one character remarks, "it's like we started out being sold, got free of it, then sold ourselves to the highest bidder." It doesn't help that another character responds, "Who you mean 'we'? Black people? Women? You mean me and you?" This is certainly true and well observed, but already apparent to even a casual reader.
Such missteps reveal just how forcefully Morrison is straining to make LOVE work, to stretch a threadbare family saga to cover such large ideas about race and gender. That she does make it work at all, that her insights more often than not hit their targets, and that LOVE is readable and fascinating seem like an extreme act of will, and there is a certain purity in such literary labor. Morrison works so hard in LOVE, and her hard work pays off for her and for the reader --- mostly.
Quote:
"Correctional girls knew better than to trust a label" (Morrison 123)
Reaction:
My reaction is that the book all the way up to the end was a really good learning experience. it really was on love. i thought that the title was there just to attract attention. i love the book and would recommend it to anyone who likes short novels that are fictional with some informational background.
Sunday, June 19, 2011
Beginning of LOVE ( first 100 pages )
Summary:
A novel about the past, LOVE begins closer to the present, with a young woman, Junior Viviane, long a resident of juvenile correctional halls, applying for a job in the big house at One Monarch Street, inhabited by two warring women: Heed Cosey, Bill's much younger second wife, now his widow, and Christine, his granddaughter.
"Each woman," Morrison writes, "lived in a spotlight separated --- or connected --- by the darkness between them." While Heed, the beneficiary of her husband's contested will, lives a lonely life in the house's richly appointed upper floors, Christine resides in the small, spare basement apartment near the kitchen. Confined to the same house, they still stay as far away from each other as possible, their silence erupting into violent arguments once every year or so.
As LOVE progresses, Morrison reveals the interconnectedness of their lives, the strange ways they are related and the strong bond they maintain despite their mutual hostility. In doing so she depicts a large cast of mostly compelling characters who haunt the novel's periphery: Christine's mother, May Cosey, whose husband died early and left her the thankless job of running her father-in-law's hotel; L, the gifted cook who provides a balanced commentary against the hysterical grievances of the main characters; and Sandler Gibbons, Bill's fishing buddy whose grandson, Romen, now works for the Cosey women and is Junior's lover.
Quote:
" I'm background -- the movie music that comes along when the sweetheart sees each other for the first time, or when the husband is walking the beachfront alone wondering if anybody saw him doing the bad thing he couldn't help. " (Morrison 4)
Reaction:
My reaction is that the first page of the novel is a soft introduction to a narrator who pulls you in with her way of seeing the ocean-side community of Up Beach, a once popular ocean resort. Its very confusing at first but gets to be more engaging and understanding after the first chapter.
A novel about the past, LOVE begins closer to the present, with a young woman, Junior Viviane, long a resident of juvenile correctional halls, applying for a job in the big house at One Monarch Street, inhabited by two warring women: Heed Cosey, Bill's much younger second wife, now his widow, and Christine, his granddaughter.
"Each woman," Morrison writes, "lived in a spotlight separated --- or connected --- by the darkness between them." While Heed, the beneficiary of her husband's contested will, lives a lonely life in the house's richly appointed upper floors, Christine resides in the small, spare basement apartment near the kitchen. Confined to the same house, they still stay as far away from each other as possible, their silence erupting into violent arguments once every year or so.
As LOVE progresses, Morrison reveals the interconnectedness of their lives, the strange ways they are related and the strong bond they maintain despite their mutual hostility. In doing so she depicts a large cast of mostly compelling characters who haunt the novel's periphery: Christine's mother, May Cosey, whose husband died early and left her the thankless job of running her father-in-law's hotel; L, the gifted cook who provides a balanced commentary against the hysterical grievances of the main characters; and Sandler Gibbons, Bill's fishing buddy whose grandson, Romen, now works for the Cosey women and is Junior's lover.
Quote:
" I'm background -- the movie music that comes along when the sweetheart sees each other for the first time, or when the husband is walking the beachfront alone wondering if anybody saw him doing the bad thing he couldn't help. " (Morrison 4)
Reaction:
My reaction is that the first page of the novel is a soft introduction to a narrator who pulls you in with her way of seeing the ocean-side community of Up Beach, a once popular ocean resort. Its very confusing at first but gets to be more engaging and understanding after the first chapter.
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