Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    Love: A novel
    Unavailable
    Love: A novel
    Unavailable
    Love: A novel
    Ebook242 pages3 hours

    Love: A novel

    By Toni Morrison

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    From the acclaimed Nobel Prize winner—a spellbinding symphony of passion and hatred, power and perversity, color and class that spans three generations of Black women in a fading beach town.

    “A marvelous work, which enlarges our conception not only of love but of racial politics.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review

    In life, Bill Cosey enjoyed the affections of many women, who would do almost anything to gain his favor. In death his hold on them may be even stronger. Wife, daughter, granddaughter, employee, mistress: As Morrison’s protagonists stake their furious claim on Cosey’s memory and estate, using everything from intrigue to outright violence, she creates a work that is shrewd, funny, erotic, and heartwrenching.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRandom House Publishing Group
    Release dateOct 28, 2003
    ISBN9781400041855
    Unavailable
    Love: A novel
    Author

    Toni Morrison

    Toni Morrison (1931–2019) was a Nobel Prize–winning American author, editor, and professor. Her contributions to the modern canon are numerous. Some of her acclaimed titles include: The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon, and Beloved, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1988. She won the 1993 Nobel Prize for Literature.

    Read more from Toni Morrison

    Related to Love

    Related ebooks

    Literary Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      OreoArroyo

      Jul 6, 2021

      WHEN THE STRIPPER STRUTTED INTO THE LIBRARY, SHE COULDN’T hide her dismay. Probably, she and her bodyguard expected a bachelor party or investment bankers celebrating a big deal at the mansion overlooking the Newport Coast. She wouldn’t have anticipa

      21 min read

    • Article

      Ghost Girl, Banana

      Aug 21, 2023

      By the time I was 25, there were only two things I remembered about Mumma. The first was that she smelled of watermelons, the second was that we were happy. We’d taken our father’s name of course, but a name is only half a story. The other half exist

      6 min read

    • Article

      You Have to Suffer

      Sep 23, 2020

      You Have to Suffer
      19 min read

    • Article

      It’s Come to This

      Sep 1, 2021

      It’s Come to This
      16 min read

    • Article

      Lost And Found

      Dec 5, 2021

      Lost And Found
      9 min read

    • Article

      On Aging

      Mar 1, 2022

      On Aging
      9 min read

    • Article

      Remembering Andy Pollitt

      Oct 2, 2023

      Remembering Andy Pollitt
      10 min read

    • Article

      Cresting the Wave

      Oct 28, 2021

      Cresting the Wave
      12 min read

    • Article

      A Farewell to Summer

      Aug 29, 2019

      A Farewell to Summer
      6 min read

    • Article

      People Are Strange

      Oct 13, 2019

      People Are Strange
      5 min read

    • Article

      Push Play

      Apr 6, 2020

      Push Play
      7 min read

    • Article

      Speedboat

      Mar 24, 2022

      Nobody died that year. Nobody prospered. There were no births or marriages. Seventeen reverent satires were written – disrupting a cliché and, presumably, creating a genre. That was a dream, of course, but many of the most important things, I fi nd,

      14 min read

    • Article

      Commentary: 'We Had A Thing For Cher, And Now We Knew Where To Find Her'

      Oct 2, 2018

      It's been nearly 40 years since I've lived in Los Angeles. I still visit every year or so and am always struck by how surpassingly pleasant it is, and how ... floaty. There's a buoyancy particular to my hometown, one I feel nowhere else. I'm an inch

      4 min read

    • Article

      Losing The Plot

      Jun 19, 2022

      Our bathroom had dark-blue wallpaper with birds and flowers on it, like the wallpaper in an English country house. The paintwork was putty-coloured, with a putty-coloured bath shelf that Dad had built for Mum. As well as room for Mum’s mug of Nescafé

      9 min read

    • Article

      The Sound Of Music

      Apr 3, 2020

      The Sound Of Music
      5 min read

    • Article

      Maybe It Won’t Be That Bad

      Dec 9, 2019

      Maybe It Won’t Be That Bad
      4 min read

    • Article

      Proud, Prouder, Proudest

      Jun 12, 2017

      Proud, Prouder, Proudest
      6 min read

    • Article

      Editor’s Note

      Nov 16, 2018

      Editor’s Note
      2 min read

    Reviews for Love

    3.5/5

    408 ratings17 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      This beautiful, heart-wrenching book seemed just a little uneven to me. The story spans decades from the forties to the nineties, leaving the eighties out, thankfully, and most of the seventies and touching on the thirties too. The characters are fully-realized, flawed human beings with beauty in their souls that they cannot find for most of their lives, but the reader can see it sometimes. It revolves around a wealthy man who owns a beach resort for black people at a time when businesses in the South were segregated. They have Fats Waller performing and fine dining and elegant people in the early days, but during the civil rights era, business declines and eventually it closes. A ton of women orbit this man, his daughter-in-law, his grandaughter, his second wife, the hotel cook and the receptionist and his favorite prostitute. The book is really about the women, how they fight over him and the eventual bequest of his property at the cost of their own relationships with each other. It is about friendship and love, all different kinds of love, some sublime and some sordid. My only quarrel with it was I felt that Morrison sped through one woman's story too fast only giving a cursory glance at the whole civil rights era. This part felt rushed or over-edited. It either needed to be more subtly shown, upon with that light Toni Morrison touch, or more fleshed out. The way it reads is like an over-long tangential distraction, not meaty enough to sink my teeth into, but too long to follow without more explanation. On the whole another remarkably luscious book.
    • 3/5
      Love is the story of several women whose lives were tied to Bill Cosey, owner of a seaside resort hotel catering to Black clientele. Cosey is dead and the hotel is no longer a going concern. His widow, Heed, daughter-in-law May, and granddaughter Christine now live in the hotel and wage constant battles for power over one another. Heed has also hired a young woman named Junior as her secretary to help write a book about her life, a project the other two women simultaneously scorn and fear. A woman named “L,” part of the resort in the old days, appears occasionally to provide insight on the lives of the characters. Love unfolds in a non-linear and often disjointed fashion in Morrison’s trademark style. Reading her work is like doing a jigsaw puzzle, starting with a jumble of disconnected pieces and gradually finding the connections and binding it all together around the edge. That’s what makes her books so interesting, so I won’t reveal any of those connections in this review. Her language is exquisite, and the “reveals” expertly done. I love when a book elicits an “aha” response, and this one did that.And yet, I struggled to identify the central theme of the work and the meaning of the title. There were many forms of love in evidence, some healthier than others. The bonds between the women were powerful in their unique way. Morrison also wove in commentary on civil rights issues. But after thinking about it for a few days, I just can’t quite tie it all together.
    • 4/5
      In [Love], Morrison slowly reveals the relationships of multiple women with each other and with a successful Black man and hotel owner named Bill Cosey. The women are his child-wife, his granddaughter, and his daughter-in-law. At heart of the novel is everyone's relationship with the deceased Bill Cosey, but more importantly to me, their relationships with each other. Cosey's wife, Heed, and his granddaughter Christine are the same age and were friends before Cosey took Heed as his wife. Their relationship is central to the book. This is a brief novel, only 200 pages, and there are still things I didn't quite understand. I'm hoping our group discussion will help me sort some of it out. I also felt that, because it was brief, though Morrison put in some larger cultural issues like the Civil Rights movement and correctional/prison systems, those didn't get explored as deeply as she explores greater societal issues in other novels. I also was a little perplexed by the title. I don't see much Love in this novel - more abuse, jealousy, and possessiveness. Maybe it was ironic. I always enjoy and respect Morrison's writing, but this novel will rank in the middle for me. It's no [Beloved], or [Paradise], or [Song of Solomon].
    • 4/5
      I always seems to struggle a bit at the start of a Morrison novel. She often drops the reader into the heart of the story, introducing elements and characters, without making the connections or providing the context one needs for a coherent picture. But what she is so good at is writing a novel where these pieces are slowly teased out, threads of a story meet up with others, characters develop, connections are illuminated, and the reader finally begins to see and understand the complex web she is weaving as a whole.Love took a bit longer than usual to show itself to me to the point where I felt like I was "getting" it. But once I did, the book was difficult to put down. At heart, it's about the various forms of love that can shape and distort a life, and about the opposite face of the same coin - the enmity and hatred that can do the same. It's a story of several women who orbit around one man and how they are both drawn to and repulsed by him, and what those conflicting emotions do to them and to their relationship with each other.It is barely 200 pages in length but Morrison can do more in those pages than most authors do in twice the number.
    • 5/5
      Brilliant story. Kept me riveted as the onion shed it's layers.
    • 2/5
      I usually love Toni Morrison's work, but I could not get into this one. Morrison read on the audio version, and I'm sorry to say she is one of those narrators who put you to sleep.
    • 4/5
      Hate is not the opposite of love, as Toni Morrison is able to so clearly show in this tale of how one man has connected the lives of so many women.The story of Cosey, a man with a deep history that infects every aspect of his being, and the women in his life, is a fascinating, if a bit surreal, read. The fact that clarity comes in pieces as to how the women are connected, the history of the relationships, and the definitions of love became a bit overwhelming at times. There were pages in which I felt lost, but the payback was well worth the dizziness inflicted by the rollercoaster of characterizations. The payback I was able to get from it was a lesson. Perhaps you can't know a full history in the moment you want to, but always be open to learning another piece of the timeline... it may be an important one.
    • 4/5
      A beautiful and captivating story about love, betrayal and friendship. This book turned me onto Toni Morrison and although often trippy, I love her and this book. A must read.
    • 4/5
      Love is not Toni Morrison's most engrossing or complex novel, but it is a wonderful read. The story, told from the perspective of multiple narratives, describes the relationships between the women in Bill Cosey's life. Women gathered around Bill Cosey, a resort owner who catered to well-to-do blacks in the 40's, 50's and 60's, like moths to a flame: L, the cryptic cook who hums and observes; Heed, Cosey's second wife who came from the poorest of the poor; Christine, his militant granddaughter; and May, Cosey's daughter-in-law. Add Sandler and Vida Gibbons, former Cosey employees, their grandson Romen, and Junior, a tough girl from out of town, and you have Morrison's cast of characters. As the story evolves, we discover that Heed and Christine, who were once childhood friends, are locked in the prison of their own hatred. Romen and Junior explore all aspects of physical relationships while Junior tries to turn her back on demons from the past.Morrison's subtext includes memory and language and how each informs our understanding of the present. As usual, Morrison's text bobs and weaves between characters, and between the present and the past. There is less of the supernatural in Love than in many of Morrison's other books - here, the ghosts and demons are memories and the interpretation of those memories. This is not Morrison's best work, but it is still an engaging and thoughtful look into the many aspects of love and it's mirror, hate.
    • 4/5
      Great depth and intelligence; really portrays the complexity of characters well and shows how differently people understand and misunderstand each other, and how small decisions we make can change the course of a whole life. I just can't help thinking, though, that the book might have been even richer if it had been a little more chronological and forgiving of its readers...
    • 3/5
      After reading some of Morrison's other works, this one fell a bit flat. It felt as if she really didn't have any new characters or new things to say, and was so rehashing some of what I'd seen from her before in books like Beloved and Jazz. If you like her style and writing, I'd recommend it, but I'd say that if you're just looking into her, you'd be better off going with Song of Solomon, which I feel is her best work to date overall.
    • 3/5
      Not one of Morrison's best works, but it's sweet none the less. A light read which deals with deep topics, which makes it worth while.
    • 2/5
      It’s taken me about five days to come up with a comment on this book. Even now as I type, I’m not entirely sure whether I liked it or not. Certainly, I have always loved Morrison’s work, and the subject matter that she deals with in Love is not as shocking or gruesome as in Paradise, for example, which I simply devoured. Nevertheless, and possibly because it’s been many years since I picked up my last Morrison, it left me on edge and puzzling as to whether this was a hit or miss.The story revolves around a deceased hotel owner, Bill Cosey, and his coven of women - how they are pitted against each other as a result of their interactions with him. There are his daughter-in-law May with his grandchild Christine, and his widowed second wife Heed, in contest over who is the “my sweet Cosey-child” named on the menu scribblings that must pass as a will. Further complicating the brew is the fact that the grandchild and widow had been same-age best friends, when Bill Cosey had wed the eleven-year-old Heed.Into this fray is added the enigmatic chef, L, who at times takes up the narrative in the first person, the delinquent Junior (a girl), who takes up a position in the Cosey household as Heed’s alluring and cunning assistant, and who falls in love with the memory/spirit/idea of Bill Cosey. Finally, there is the very mysterious woman named Celestial, who we never really know much about except that she is probably the only one of all his women that Bill Cosey truly loved.But as many will argue (myself included), there is an extremely fine disparity between hatred and love, and often the two are so completely imbricated in each other that you cannot tell where one begins and ends. Morrison explores this idea throughout the book as she slowly unravels the pasts of all the women, and their constantly developing relationships with each other. Their obsession with Bill Cosey I don’t really comprehend, despite the chiefly omniscient narrator. It is as if his mere masculinity is enough for them to catfight over - I just didn’t see his charisma. And perhaps that is my problem, and the reason why I am so ambivalent; when all the conflict, love and hatred is stemming from the actions of one main source, you would expect to feel the living charisma that wrought such extreme events. To me, Bill Cosey is no Helen of Troy.Moreover, I wasn’t entirely comfortable with L’s role as arbitrator, champion and protector of all sides, and the one character who knows all else about the others - not to mention what her single-lettered nickname is possibly meant to represent. At times her voice was more Morrison’s than the omniscient narrator itself.The relationship between Heed and Christine was, I thought, treated with compassionate nuance. Everything else simply got in the way.
    • 4/5
      lots of secrets. Didn’t understand a lot including end: who is sitting on tomb in red dress?
    • 5/5
      Love is the first book I’ve read by Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison. I was totally captivated and mesmerized by the emotionally electrifying beauty of her prose and the manifest reality of her characters. The book was fascinating on first reading, but the style in which the story unfolds—from first person to third person, from past to present, from several characters’ differing points of view—left me confused at the end. It took me a second reading in order to put all the pieces together and finally understand and appreciate the sumptuous complexity of this tale. I understand this is typical of Morrison’s style. Reading Morrison is an engaging, delightful challenge—figuring out the puzzle is half the fun. Now, I am motivated to read all her works, but I don’t plan to do this one after another. With this author, I think I would rather savor each book with a year or more in between. Every time I read one of Morrison’s books, I want to be captivated, mesmerized, and fall in love with her prose all over again. If I straightforwardly tell you the story of Love (like many of the reviewers here), I will ruin the pleasure of your discovering for yourself how the pieces fit together. I will say no more than that it is an intertwining story of six women, three men, and love turned upside-down. There is a lot of lust, anger, hatred, jealousy, rage, envy, self-loathing, and wisdom mixed up in this tale. Emotions erupt off the page; what causes these high emotions from the differing perspectives of each character is part of what makes the puzzle so thought-provoking and enjoyable to figure out. Throughout the text we see the same significant events happening from the varying viewpoints of the different players involved. In doing so, we learn to understand and forgive—not only the human frailty in each character, but also the human frailty in ourselves. I highly recommend this book, but come prepared for a rollercoaster ride through some difficult and awe-inspiring emotional territory.
    • 5/5
      Heed, Christine, May, Vida, Junior and somewhat mysterious narrator, L:, are all connected to the wealthy owner of the once famous Cosey Hotel and Resort in Up Beach on the Atlantic coast in the southern US, and the most powerful man there, Bill Cosey. He personifies their longings for different types of love from that of a husband, lover to father, guardian, and friend, and is still the center of their lives long after his death. His shadowy character slowly unfolds through their narration. The novel is told in a series of intertwining narration pieces entitled Portrait, Friend, Stranger, Benefactor, Lover, Husband, Guardian and Father, not unlike in Faulkner’s books, and the family history is revealed very slowly and in twists and turns. Through her characters, Morrison examines the many faces of love and friendship and how closely they can come to hate, and how our perceptions can be remote from reality. Also, how easy it is to forgive people who are wealthy.The style is lyrical and beautiful, and even before I truly knew what the story was about, I loved listening to the language it was written in. And the fact that it was read by Morrison herself added to the tune of it.
    • 4/5
      Love. All of Morrison's novels are about love, essentially. Love of self, excessive love, dangerous love, motherly love. This was supposedly the cap on her self-described "Love Trilogy" of Beloved, Paradise, and Jazz. This novel wasn't nearly as complex as those 3, consequently it should be enjoyable for those who think Morrison is too "high-brow". I enjoyed it also, I read it in 2 sittings. for a while it seemed that this was indeed Morrison responding to critics, in that she demonized the women instead of the men, lol. But all is never that simple, as we find out closer to the end. If you're looking to just read a good story, Love should please, but it does have its layers. They aren't as integral to the story as they are in a novel like Beloved however. And this novel is worth reading just for the setting. I have this town permanently and perfectly etched in my brain.