Love
“He took all my childhood away from me, girl.
He took all of you away from me”
I knew this was going to be a good one when I was almost weeping reading the forward. If you saw my copy of this book you would visually see how much I enjoyed it. It is filled with notes and tabs, to the point that I ran out of tabs multiple times. It has quickly shot to being my favorite Morrison novel that I have read so far. It is also one of the easier reads following the intimidating Paradise and formidable Jazz (which I read back to back, smh). However, in its simplicity, the novel does not lack any depth. In fact, its depth can be seen as the culmination of all of the difficulty in the prior published works. Love’s depth and richness can only truly be understood if you have read and warred the 7 books prior to this one’s release. It is honestly a love letter to her fans who have read her intimately. I love reading Morrison.
So what had happened was…
This is a book about the rich tapestry of several character’s lives left in the wake after the passing of a powerful man named Bill Cosey. The book, like life, is full of contradictions and experiences built on top of each other, while simultaneously misaligned, leaving a shaky version of the truth. The only real truth is in the grave.
The easiest place to begin to unfurl the tapestry is with Christine and Heed. Christine is Bill’s granddaughter. Now an older woman left behind to manage what was left of his hotel empire. Bill was the owner of a hotel in a location that was popular amongst Black elites during segregation, however upon desegregation once Black people could choose other locations, the hotel began to deteriorate. Christine’s mother was terrified of the political radicalism of the 60s and believed it would be the end of her family. In a way she was right, in many ways she was wrong. She sent Christine away to boarding school where she became highly educated and further radicalized despite her mother’s disapproval of her political leanings. Christine understood her being sent away as being due to her grandfather’s marriage to his second wife, Heed. Heed and Christine were once friends, but upon Christine’s grandfather taking her slightly younger friend (at the age of 11) as a wife, like the hotel, the friendship deteriorated. Heed was basically given to Bill by her impoverished family in exchange for a better life with a wealthy and respected man and rumors of a kick back to the family. But all that is left now of Bill is will scrawled on the back of a menu and those trying to understand life without this stalwart, flawed, horrible, generous man.
Junior is an interloper in the story of Christine and Heed. Escaping an abusive home and abject poverty, she was put into correctional for an attempted murder. In actuality, she refused sexual acts from an administrator at her school. It is while in correctional that she begins to get comfortable (read institutionalized) and begins to see Mr. Good Man. Mr. Good Man is the figure of a man that resembles who she comes to know as Bill Cosey. At about 19 or 20 years old, after getting out of correctional, Junior ends up on Bill Cosey’s property seeking employment as a possible caretaker/stenographer for Heed. Christine initially views Junior as a threat because although she is Bill’s granddaughter, she has no right to any of his land (due to the interpretation of the roughly drawn will). Christine believes that Heed is trying to kick her out due to their longstanding rivalry. Junior gets the job and takes care of Heed’s physical needs and writes her story all while sleeping with the 14 year old groundskeeper/errand runner, Romen. This sexual relationship with Romen is interpreted by Junior as liked by Mr. Good Man who she now sees as Bill directing her to take over his estate out of love for Junior.
Eventually, everything leads to Heed, who is illiterate, taking Junior to the decrepit hotel to try to fake a will that clearly states that she is to inherit all of Bill’s estate. However, before they can do so Christine arrives. In the shock of Christine’s presence, Junior covers a whole that Heed falls through on top of Christine. The two older women lay on the floor of the rotting hotel making peace with one another while Heed slips into death.
Junior goes back to the house where she looks for Mr. Good Man’s approval but he is nowhere to be found. As an attempt to bring him forth, she sleeps with Romen again who is uncomfortable with the sex that they have, but continues to do it. Eventually, Romen realizes that Junior has left Christine and Heed injured in the hotel. He drives the car to save them, but is too late for Heed. Similar to a gang rape he witnessed, Romen carries the women out of the peril.
Throughout the book there are brief narrations by another character, L. She was a longtime cook at the hotel and was last seen at Bill’s funeral. She has since passed. The final chapter is written in her voice where we learn that she was the cause of Bill’s death via poisoning (Romen’s grandmother was partially right and partially wrong), she was the one who vaguely forged the will in an effort to keep the two girls together, that Bill intended to give his estate to his mistress who was going to have his child. L tells us this from Bill’s grave where she sometimes sees this mistress, but never sees Bill.
Aiight so boom
As with any Morrison novel there is so much to be discussed, but the overall theme is so beautiful that I have to talk about it. Morrison, in an interview with CBS News Morning after the release of the book, stated that “It’s [love] the real subject… I can see it now.” While she had written 7 novels on various topics as diverse as slavery, class consciousness, colorism, to patriarchy the interviewer states that “Toni Morrison always regarded love as the agonizing subtext of her books.” This quote unlocks the true genius of Toni Morrison. My wife, who is the beginning of my love for Toni, once told me that all of her books are in dialogue with one another. With Toni’s quote and my wife’s voice, it unlocked how Love is the culmination of all of the works before it. In some places completing things we never saw and in others playing off of writing techniques and clarifying their mysteries. I had to do a break down by book:
Bluest Eye- The loss of the childhood of 2 little black girls that loved each other at the hands of child molesters and a society unwilling to protect them.
Sula- The intense and complicated love of two women who inhabit different social lives. Love/jealousy/freedom. And how love and hate can inhabit the same space.
Song of Solomon- The conversation between Christine and Heed in each others arms after years of a mix of love and hate at the climax of their battle (over a perceived treasure) is the unheard conversation of Milkman and Guitar when they leap into each others arms in conflict and begin to fly.
Tar Baby- How class effects the Black experience of love. How loving across class lines, even intra-racially, can complicate an otherwise easy and innocent love.
Beloved- Mr. Good Man is more than a ghost (L is the ghost). He is the personification of Junior’s trauma around love. The African proverb- “The child who is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth” comes to mind. In the same way that Beloved is more than a ghost she is the racialized trauma of slavery from the middle passage to the horror endured by Paul D, to the acts committed by Sethe. Toni including the real ghost in L which gives us a better understanding of Beloved. Beloved can easily be flattened to just the ghost of Sethe’s child.
Jazz- The reckless and uniformed love of a teenage girl in Dorcas with Joe Trace is similar to Junior’s obsession with Mr. Goodman. Foolish, wanton, and ultimately deadly.
Paradise- The inner workings of women who have been cast aside by society in a home (that is infamous and a deeper metaphor in and of itself). ALSO the magical realism is very similar with the line between this world and the next being gossamer thin. The way that Morrison writes the after life as being present in this life (see the last chapter of Paradise after the brutal killing of the women in the convent- many of whom are still interacting on this plane), is continued here with L.