Love (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.

For the 1971 novel by Angela Carter, see Love (Carter novel). For the 2020 novel by Roddy Doyle, see Love (Doyle novel).
Love
Cover of the first edition
AuthorToni Morrison
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
GenreAfrican-American literature
PublisherAlfred A. Knopf
Publication date
2003
Media typePrint (hardback & paperback)
Pages208 pp
ISBN978-0-375-40944-8
OCLC52039575
813/.54 21
LC ClassPS3563.O8749 L68 2003
Preceded byParadise 
Followed byA Mercy 

Cosey was a charismatic hotel owner, and the people around him were 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 uses 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 her 1987 novel 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.

Critical reception

According to the book review aggregator Book Marks, Love received mostly positive reviews from critics.[1] For example, critic Elaine Showalter, writing in The Guardian, praised it as "a disarmingly compact, unpompous book ... full of quirky, perverse characters and provocative, unfashionable ideas."[2] In The New York Times, Laura Miller compared Love favorably to some of Morrison's earlier works, such as Beloved and Sula.[3]

References
  1. Reviews of Toni Morrison's Love on Book Marks
  2. Elaine Showalter, "A Tangled Web," The Guardian, 28 November 2003.
  3. Laura Miller, "The Last Resort", The New York Times, 2 November 2003.
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