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.
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