LOVE
作者： Toni Morrison 著
出版社：Random House US 2005年1月
简介：Book DescriptionToni Morrison's new novelis a Faulknerian symphony of passion and hatred, power andperversity, color and class that spans three generations of blackwomen in a fading beach town.In life, Bill Cosey enjoyed the affections of many women, who woulddo almost anything to gain his favor. In death his hold on them maybe even stronger. Wife, daughter, granddaughter, employee,mistress: As Morrison's protagonists stake their furious claim onCosey's memory and estate, using everything from intrigue tooutright violence, she creates a work that is shrewd, funny,erotic, and heart-wrenching.Amazon.comThe first page of Toni Morrison's novel Love is a soft introductionto a narrator who pulls you in with her version of a tale of theocean-side community of Up Beach, a once popular ocean resort.Morrison introduces an enclave of people who react to one man--BillCosey--and to each other as they tell of his affect on generationsof characters living in the seaside community. One clear truthhere, told time and again, is how folks love and hate each otherand the myriad ways it's manifested; these versions of humanity areseen in almost every line. Monsters and ghosts creep into younggirls' dreams and around corners and then return to staid ladies'lives as they age and remember friendships and cold battles. Menand women--Heed, Romen, Junior, Christine, Celestial, and the restof Morrison's cast--cry and sing out their weaknesses and strengthsin rotating perspectives. Sandler, a Cosey employee, is a brilliantagent of Morrison's descriptions of human behavior, "Then, in asudden shift of subject that children and heavy drinkers enjoy, 'Myson, Billy was about your age. When he died, I mean.'" And Romen isallowed to play hero by saving a young girl from a brutal gangrape, while at the same time, he battles disgust like no superhumanwould be caught dead feeling.Though slim in pages, Morrison constructs Love with a precision andelegance that shows her characters' flaws and fears with brutalaccuracy. Love may be less complex than others in the grandMorrison oeuvre, but not because Morrison performs literaryhand-holding. Readers will experience in this smooth, sharp-eyedgem another instance of the Toni Morrison craftsmanship: she entersyour mind, hangs a tale or two there, and leaves just as quietly asshe came. --E. Brooke GilbertFrom Publishers WeeklyAt the center of this haunting, slender eighth novel by Nobelwinner Morrison is the late Bill Cosey-entrepreneur, patriarch,revered owner of the glorious Cosey Hotel and Resort (once "thebest and best-known vacation spot for colored folk on the EastCoast") and captivating ladies' man. When the novel opens, theresort has long been closed, and Cosey's mansion shelters only twofeuding women, his widow, Heed, and his granddaughter, Christine.Then sly Junior Viviane, fresh out of "Reform, then Prison,"answers the ad Heed placed for a companion and secretary, and setsthe novel's present action-which is secondary to the rich past-inmotion. "Rigid vipers," Vida Gibbons calls the Cosey women;formerly employed at the Cosey resort, Vida remembers only itsgrandeur and the benevolence of its owner, though her husband,Sandler, knew the darker side of Vida's idol. As Heed and Christinefeud ("Like friendship, hatred needed more than physical intimacy:it wanted creativity and hard work to sustain itself"), Junior ofthe "sci-fi eyes" vigorously seduces Vida and Sandler's teenagegrandson. In lyrical flashbacks, Morrison slowly, teasingly revealsthe glories and horrors of the past-Cosey's suspicious death, theprovenance of his money, the vicious fight over his coffin, hisdisputed will. Even more carefully, she unveils the women inCosey's life: his daughter-in-law, May, whose fear that civilrights would destroy everything they had worked for drove her tokleptomania and insanity; May's daughter, Christine, who spent hardyears away from the paradise of the hotel; impoverished Heed theNight Johnson, who became Cosey's very young "wifelet"; themysterious "sporting woman" Celestial; and L, the wise and quietformer hotel chef, whose first-person narration weaves throughoutthe novel, summarizing and appraising lives and hearts. Morrisonhas crafted a gorgeous, stately novel whose mysteries are graduallyunearthed, while Cosey, its axis, a man "ripped, like the rest ofus, by wrath and love," remains deliberately in shadow, even as hisfamily burns brightly, terribly around him.From BooklistDespite the simplicity of its title, Love is a profound novel. ANobel laureate must feel considerable pressure to keep performingon a higher level than other writers. With her latest novel,Morrison slaps our face with the fact that she is better than most.The book has the tone of an elegy, for it emerges as a remembranceof and yearning for past times and past people in a black seasidecommunity. There were days, back in the 1940s and 1950s, when theCosey Hotel and Resort was the place for blacks to vacation, dance,and dine. Bill Cosey, a charismatic figure greatly attractive towomen, ran the resort. But now Bill is dead, and the story is, aswe see, not only a paean to past good times but also a portrait ofBill Cosey's power. Unusual for blacks at the time, Bill did enjoypower, both economic and social, for as far as the boundaries ofhis coastal town reached--his kingdom by the sea. Now, in hisabsence, the women in his life jockey for their own power in thevacuum he left behind; their world now revolves around his will,scribbled many years ago on a dirty menu. The novel's sectionheadings tell the tale of the different roles Bill played in thesewomen's lives: friend, benefactor, lover, and husband, amongothers. At least in her later novels, Morrison can stand to becriticized for obscurantism, which is also the case, to a certaindegree, here; in fact, readers may want to compose a chart as theyread, to keep characters and their relationships to each otherstraight. But as a vivid painter of human emotions, Morrison iswithout peer, her impressions rendered in an exquisitely metaphoricbut comfortably open style. Brad HooperFrom AudioFileBill Cosey's male magnetism attracts the women who inhabitMorrison's pages. Some commanding, some flighty, all are drawn toCosey's passion. Once, Cosey's Hotel and Resort on the beach wasthe place for "colored folk on the East Coast." Now, the run-downstructure is home to his contentious widow and granddaughter.Through a series of retrospectives, the mystery of the questionablecircumstances surrounding Cosey's death and his role in eachwoman's life gradually unfolds. Morrison confronts issues of racein America, particularly the deep disappointment of manyAfrican-Americans in the face of ineffectual civil rightslegislation. Aching with melancholy for another, better, time, atime left in a troubled past, Morrison's novel combines elegance oflanguage with a lush, luxurious reading to make "must listening."S.J.H. Winner of AUDIOFILE Earphones AwardBook Dimensionlength: (cm)20.1 width:(cm)13.2
