Scan barcode
A review by lunabbly
Love by Toni Morrison
5.0
Toni Morrison does it again! A beautifully written novel full of lust, desperation, secrecy, resentment, and fear -- fear of loneliness and abandonment.
Every small tidbit was so important to Christine and Heed's character development, every page reveals each others' thought processes as they were processing where, why, and how they ended up being best friends to enemies, and finally at the end, understanding and forgiving each other. Their love for each other though, persevered even though it didn't always seem like it.
L, the cook, was also important to the storyline. She's the narrator who appears in italicized text -- and she wraps up the loose ends citing that she knew where the father/husband/lover Bill Cosey put his money and will towards -- Celestial. Who we don't know much about besides the fact that she was Bill Cosey's mistress and she was the one he made the will out to and sent all of his money towards, though L blocked that from happening because it would absolutely destroy the women in his life.
Greater still was that the underlying message was not so much that these women let Bill Cosey control their lives but the way in which misogyny and specifically misogynoir unjustly forces Black women to feel undesired, uncared for, and maybe even a little desperate to be accepted by the people in their lives as they are. Bill Cosey faked that acceptance, and it was enough to allow people like Vida, a former worker of his, to assume he was a good man. He used his "manhood" and privilege as a cis, heterosexual man, to manipulate these women and then eventually blamed his woes on the women in his life rather than his own poor choices and decisions.
I highly recommend. Toni Morrison is a beautiful writer and her prose is captivating as well as the development of the stories she writes.
Every small tidbit was so important to Christine and Heed's character development, every page reveals each others' thought processes as they were processing where, why, and how they ended up being best friends to enemies, and finally at the end, understanding and forgiving each other. Their love for each other though, persevered even though it didn't always seem like it.
L, the cook, was also important to the storyline. She's the narrator who appears in italicized text -- and she wraps up the loose ends citing that she knew where the father/husband/lover Bill Cosey put his money and will towards -- Celestial. Who we don't know much about besides the fact that she was Bill Cosey's mistress and she was the one he made the will out to and sent all of his money towards, though L blocked that from happening because it would absolutely destroy the women in his life.
Greater still was that the underlying message was not so much that these women let Bill Cosey control their lives but the way in which misogyny and specifically misogynoir unjustly forces Black women to feel undesired, uncared for, and maybe even a little desperate to be accepted by the people in their lives as they are. Bill Cosey faked that acceptance, and it was enough to allow people like Vida, a former worker of his, to assume he was a good man. He used his "manhood" and privilege as a cis, heterosexual man, to manipulate these women and then eventually blamed his woes on the women in his life rather than his own poor choices and decisions.
I highly recommend. Toni Morrison is a beautiful writer and her prose is captivating as well as the development of the stories she writes.