Jazz
From the acclaimed Nobel Prize winner, a passionate, profound story of love and obsession that brings us back and forth in time, as a narrative is assembled from the emotions, hopes, fears, and deep realities of Black urban life. With a foreword by the author. "As rich in themes and poetic images as her Pulitzer Prize-winning Beloved.... Morrison conjures up the hand of slavery on Harlem's jazz generation. The more you listen, the more you crave to hear." --Glamour
In the winter of 1926, when everybody everywhere sees nothing but good things ahead, Joe Trace, middle-aged door-to-door salesman of Cleopatra beauty products, shoots his teenage lover to death. At the funeral, Joe's wife, Violet, attacks the girl's corpse. This novel "transforms a familiar refrain of jilted love into a bold, sustaining time of self-knowledge and discovery. Its rhythms are infectious" (People). "The author conjures up worlds with complete authority and makes no secret of her angst at the injustices dealt to Black women." --The New York Times Book Review
In the winter of 1926, when everybody everywhere sees nothing but good things ahead, Joe Trace, middle-aged door-to-door salesman of Cleopatra beauty products, shoots his teenage lover to death. At the funeral, Joe's wife, Violet, attacks the girl's corpse. This novel "transforms a familiar refrain of jilted love into a bold, sustaining time of self-knowledge and discovery. Its rhythms are infectious" (People). "The author conjures up worlds with complete authority and makes no secret of her angst at the injustices dealt to Black women." --The New York Times Book Review
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Wow. While I often struggled to know who was narrating each section, the book has a wonderful dreamlike, improvisation. Toni Morrison has a perceptive way with language - allowing it fluidity and grace while preserving its urgency. The juxtaposition of ideas brings the familiar into a new-found light. "...laughter is serious. More complicated, more serious than tears." The interpretation of the myriad ways to be black during the reconstruction and the years following that - into the 20's and 30's was enlightening to me. I just wish I understood the end!
Morrison crafted quite the tale, one greatly reminiscent of a universal human experience: from the delicious and dangerous nature of assumption to the passion and pain of being alive. I have a feeling that if I went back to reread the novel, I would appreciate it all that much more... It's just one of those books whose ideas and phrases will haunt you, if you allow them to. What a book to make you aware of the present and all of its possibilities, just through the use of "now".
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