Love (Toni Morrison Novel)

Love (2003) is the eighth novel by Toni Morrison. Written in Morrison's non-linear style, the novel tells of the lives of several women and their relationships to the late Bill Cosey.

Love is the story of Bill Cosey, a charismatic but dead hotel owner. Or rather, it is about the people around him, all affected by his life — even long after his death. The main characters are Christine, his granddaughter and Heed, his widow. The two are the same age and used to be friends but some forty years after Cosey's death they are sworn enemies, and yet share his mansion. Again Morrison used split narrative and jumps back and forth throughout the story, not fully unfolding until the very end. The characters in the novel all have some relation to the infamous Bill Cosey.

Similar to the concept of communication between the living and the dead in Beloved, Morrison introduced a character named Junior; she was the medium to connect the dead Bill Cosey to the world of the living.

The storytelling techniques in Love, namely the split narrative, suggest a recent trend in Morrison's literature that divides the plot among different time periods.

Works by Toni Morrison
Novels
  • The Bluest Eye (1970)
  • Sula (1973)
  • Song of Solomon (1977)
  • Tar Baby (1981)
  • Beloved (1987)
  • Jazz (1992)
  • Paradise (1997)
  • Love (2003)
  • A Mercy (2008)
  • Home (2012)
Short stories
  • "Recitatif" (1983)
Plays
  • Dreaming Emmett (1986)
Non-fiction
  • The Black Book (1974)
  • Playing in the Dark (1993)
  • Remember:The Journey to School Integration (2004)
Other
  • Margaret Garner (2005 libretto)

THEMES: - Love (in different forms)


Famous quotes containing the word love:

    Your love by ours we measure
    Till we have lost our treasure,
    But dying is a pleasure,
    When living is a pain.
    John Dryden (1631–1700)