pages 100-199

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.