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Love

3.62 of 5 stars 3.62 · rating details · 4,477 ratings · 283 reviews

May, Christine, Heed, Junior, Vida - even L who cooks for them and sees everything - all are women obsessed by Bill Cosey. The wealthy owner of the famous Cosey Hotel and Resort (a glamorous black-only beachside resort that flourished in the post-war years), he's powerful charismatic, monstrous, shadowy, and he shapes the yearnings that dominate the lives of these women lo...more

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Published November 6th 2003 by Chatto & Windus (first published January 1st 2003)

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Jun 01, 2008 Matthew rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

I have to admit, I have been averse to reading a Toni Morrison novel since just about the time I became literate. There's no valid reason for this; I tend not to like things that everybody and their mother praises until I finally cave and try them and realize that there is in fact a very good reason that everybody and their mother praises them. I'd give examples, but I'm fresh out. And anyway, this is about Toni Morrison right now! And to get back to her, I've proved myself correct again: I am a...more I have to admit, I have been averse to reading a Toni Morrison novel since just about the time I became literate. There's no valid reason for this; I tend not to like things that everybody and their mother praises until I finally cave and try them and realize that there is in fact a very good reason that everybody and their mother praises them. I'd give examples, but I'm fresh out. And anyway, this is about Toni Morrison right now! And to get back to her, I've proved myself correct again: I am absolutely insane for not listening to everybody and their mother much earlier, because Toni Morrison is great. Great! Just great.

I picked up this book based solely on the title. I've been trying to get an understanding of love for quite some time (cf. my recent journal post, "Spooning for Spooning's Sake and the Death of Love"), and things had been going relatively poorly. I've read bunches of heterosexual love stories and came out empty. I tried stories written by men, nothing. Stories written by women, still nothing. The straights gave me nothing, so I tried the gays, and gay love stories were almost even less helpful than the straight ones! (As a gay man, this left me disappointed.) So, I thought I'd try to see if the African-American woman had anything to say about it, and I figured Ms. Morrison was as good a bet as any.

I can't say that I finally understand why some people just don't fall in love with other some other people (*cough*me*cough*) or why love makes you do some of the things you do (*cough*delete things like myspace and LJ in fits of rage*cough*), but I can see why Love made some people (*cough*me again*cough*) spark for Toni Morrison. The characters are so elegantly wrought that each story seems clear, lucid, full. Complete. There are quite a few characters that span quite a few generations, and to be able to explore them all so thoroughly in such a short novel is quite the feat. The plot, too, is finely done: it unravels at a perfect pace, glances coyly at its reader from behind a veil before lifting the fabric and revealing what lies underneath. Never once did I feel the story slow or bore or lag. Finally, the narration is extremely interesting: most of the book is told from third-person limited, but who exactly limits the view changes based on chapters, paragraphs, even sentences. At times, though, Love breaks into an italicized first-person narration, and it is this narrator that appeals the most to me, whose words I found myself highlighting most often.

I read the novel in spurts, though, and I think this affected greatly my appreciation and understanding of the novel. I've been having a rough week or two and because of that, basically everything I've done has been splintered and tainted with not-so-happy feelings, and I really want to read the novel again, in as short an amount of time as possible. As I said, the plot really does slowly undress itself, and I'd like to see now if I can catch glimpses earlier on of later events, to take my completed knowledge of the novel and apply it to the bits earlier on and see if they shed any more light on Love, the book if not the phenomenon.

The end of the novel leaves a bit of plot unwrapped, though, and that may put a few readers off. Myself, I like to see everything wrapped up. Even if things don't end happily, I like things to end: I hate being able to ask, "So what happened with... ?" Nevertheless, I didn't mind it quite as much as I thought I would have with this novel, and if your trepidation that the ending may leave you hanging is the only thing preventing you from reading this little ditty, get over it pronto and get the book and read it. Personally, I plan to fall into Love again quite soon, and as often as possible!

(Sorry, I had to get at least one cheesy pun in there. You were expecting it. Admit it.)(less)

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Jan 30, 2011 Dominic rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: modern-literature

The worlds of Toni Morrison are rarely beautiful places. They are landscapes covered with scars and suffering, bruises and bitterness. Yet the way she writes these places into life and imagination leaves me exhilarated every time. And when I put one of her books down for the first time, it calls me back into in immediately. I can't wait to re-read Love. And like all Morrison novels, it actually requires re-reading.

In the lively spirit of William Faulkner, Morrison entangles readers in a web of c...more

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Aug 23, 2012 Titilayo Ogunmakinwa rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This review is being written after my first read...I am a Toni Morrison Fan that rereads her books at least twice. I don't find her writing perplex but so full of many different enoyable layers that in order to fully get the true genius you must read time and time again to get the many gifts outside of the story presented.

Love touched on and spoke to so many realities that were prevalent in society during the time period captured and how these "realities" move through communities, families, gene...more

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Aug 12, 2012 Natalie rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I have really wanted to try Toni Morrison for a while, and I picked up this book for free a while back.

I can see why Morrison is hailed as a stunning author--but, that said, I wasn't crazy about the book.

The structure of the story was really jumbled and unclear.... and all that jumbledness did add to the impact of the details as they were later revealed, but it made it confusing and slow to read for probably the first two thirds of the book.

One of the final scenes of the book, where Heed and...more

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May 08, 2012 Carl Brush rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I guess I see a little what all the complaining is about. Love received such tepid reviews I was almost afraid to read for fear it would bring Toni Morrison down from her (all right, my) pedestal. I shouldn’t have worried. This is not Morrison at full power. It’s neither Song of Solomon nor Beloved, but eighty or ninety per cent of Tony Morrison is worth a hundred and twenty per cent of almost anyone else.
All over the world, traitors help progress. It’s like being exposed to tuberculosis. Afte...more I guess I see a little what all the complaining is about. Love received such tepid reviews I was almost afraid to read for fear it would bring Toni Morrison down from her (all right, my) pedestal. I shouldn’t have worried. This is not Morrison at full power. It’s neither Song of Solomon nor Beloved, but eighty or ninety per cent of Tony Morrison is worth a hundred and twenty per cent of almost anyone else.
All over the world, traitors help progress. It’s like being exposed to tuberculosis. After it fills the cemetery, it strengthens whoever survives; helps them to know the difference between a strong mind and a healthy one; between the righteous and the right--which is, after all, progress. The problem for those left alive is what to do about revenge--how to escape the sweetness of its rot. So you can see why families make the best enemies.
Not many authors could live up to that. But Toni does. Love explores a history of a neighborhood, a country, a race, a family, several lives, all bound to one another’s selves and histories with an an intensity that is born of love and nourished by hatred. Heed (full name Heed the Night) and Christine are old ladies in a house inherited from a common patriarch. Which one of them is the true heir is ambiguous, but neither will let go either of the house or of the bitterness, either about their situation or toward one another.
Into the scene comes one of those characters--girls--that Morrison loves. Junior Viviane (“With and “e.” Are you loving the names?)--she won’t let anyone call her June--drops seemingly out of nowhere, in the scene she is, but not of it, outside any human or natural law, and born to sow turmoil wherever she lands.
Now, again, this is Morrison, so we know to expect the supernatural, or spiritual voices. And we get them. Truth? I’m not sure who one or two of them are. But the voices are haunting and truthful and guide us through the vortex of time and emotion back to the beginning of all this period that the book covers. Little by little, of course. We learn nothing all at once. it wouldn’t be good for us, like looking on the face of God.
When our two hundred page journey is done, and this portion of the story is played out as much as it’s going to be this time around, we’re left with that Morrison feeling that we’re walking out of a fantasy into some foreign place--call it daylight--where the edges are sharp, things are what they seem, and facts are solid as stone. During the journey, however, nothing has quite made sense and, yet, everything did. It was awful for a fifty-plus man to marry himself off to an eleven-year-old girl. But you understood it. It wasn’t right, but you understood it. No way out here in the sunlight it can be contemplated, let alone forgiven. You had to be there. Same with half the stuff Junior does. We’re glad to find a steadying influence like Sandler in the neighborhood, but too much of him would get in the way of the story, and it’s the story that matters as much as the living. And that may be the Morrison Nobel point. The story, the myth, the tale, is as important as the living of it, may even determine the living, and in turn the telling, of it. And like the line about not knowing the dancer from the dance, you in the end may not know the person from his story, or one from the other. Enchantment.
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Apr 09, 2012 Zack rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

i feel like i need to read morrison's books twice - the first time i just get caught up in the language and structure of her writing. morrison, i believe, literally has a mastery of the written word. it's one thing for writers like dan simmons and richard matheson to be obvious masters of english. they know the language, and they seemingly know every single word of it, but when it comes time to abandon the textbook rules and write the most effective prose possible, morrison can leave the sheet m...more

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Sep 15, 2011 Michael Bacon rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Toni Morrison’s characters in Love are largely (perhaps only) within the frame of stereotypes, though more interesting than that suggests – from a literary perspective. From a social/cultural (emphasis on cultural) perspective, however, they’re easily understood as offensive and racism-propagating. In defense of this decision, Elaine Showalter argues in her review of Love in The Guardian that “Morrison's imaginative range of identification is narrower by choice ; although she would no doubt argu...more Toni Morrison’s characters in Love are largely (perhaps only) within the frame of stereotypes, though more interesting than that suggests – from a literary perspective. From a social/cultural (emphasis on cultural) perspective, however, they’re easily understood as offensive and racism-propagating. In defense of this decision, Elaine Showalter argues in her review of Love in The Guardian that “Morrison's imaginative range of identification is narrower by choice ; although she would no doubt argue - and rightly - that African-American characters can speak for all humanity. But in Love, they do not; they are stubbornly bound by their own culture; and thus, while Love is certainly an accomplished novel, its perfection comes from its limitation” (Showalter).

Morrison may, perhaps, be displaying the effects of cultural gender (and race) with the purpose of critiquing them rather than encouraging or praising them, fitting into DeLauretis' "The Technologies of Gender." She might be working to construct gender by presenting a previous construction of it unfavorably. She does not write satire; I do not mean that. She writes her characters as if they are real people she believes exist, but that she’d rather were of a different nature than they possess. She is not critiquing the portrayal of gender by culture but is critiquing the manifestation of actual gender (as chosen by social actors) that culture has created in them.

Junior might be sexualized (even visually and even from her first introduction) because she represents Morrison’s understanding of how (black) women are sexualized, by others, by culture, and by their acceptance of that culture. To reference David Kingsley’s reference to Valerie Smith’s essay "Bleck Feminist Theory and the Representation of the 'Other'", it seems reasonable to argue that Morrison “suspend[s] the variables of race, class, and gender in mutually interrogative relation (318)” in order to present the machinations of gender rather than to directly complain about them or their representations in culture.

Showalter, Elaine. "A Tangled Web." The Guardian. 29 November 2003, 29 Nov. 2003. Web. 21 Mar. 2011. .
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Jun 28, 2010 Jalena rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

There are so many quotes in this book that I want to write down and remember forever. Beautifully written, amazingly crafted story of the complexity of love, human relationships, family, betrayal, innocence, and friendship. It raises fascinating questions about what love really means and whether most are capable of giving it for reasons other than selfish gain, or to meet a personal need. Every character's story is told from various perspectives, not always in order. while this makes the book a...more

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Apr 11, 2010 Tifnie rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

?? I'm not too sure I know what I read. This book is about 200 pages and what I thought I could finish in a couple of days, if not one, ended up taking the better part of 3 to 4 weeks.

Love, if I understand correctly, is about a perverted wealthy old man who ends up marrying an 11 year old girl and eventually has this child take on the business of a running a resort. Much to the dismay of his actual blood family. Thankfully, the author didn't go into detail regarding the relationship between the...more

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Jul 20, 2009 Lanew-yorkaise rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

From http://lanew-yorkaise.com/

His soft eyes stare out invitingly from the portrait above the bed, but his lips aren’t talking. Bill Cosey has been dead for 25 years. And women in the small town of Silk are still scratching at each other over him.

Toni Morrison paints a disturbing, delicate, and erotic portrait of female friendship in Love, her eighth novel. She shows how this emotion, and the need for it, can lead to the deepest forms of hatred. In the words of the author: “Love is the weather....more

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Feb 13, 2009 Janelle rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Wow this book really confused me. However it was not a bad story at all in fact I enjoyed it. I expected the irony of the whole story. What is so intriguing about this book is that you don't really figure out the whole story until you reach the end of the book. Therefore in the beginning of the book you are presented with the facts and characters. However as you journey through the book's plot you learn why each character is so memorable and you begin to distinguish one character from the other...more

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Jan 26, 2012 Roger DeBlanck rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

With the publication of Love in 2003, her first novel in six years, Toni Morrison’s remarkable literary career stretched into its fourth decade. During that time she has won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1977, the Pulitzer Prize in 1988, and the crowning achievement of the Nobel Prize in 1993. At 201 pages Love is one of Morrison’s more slender novels, but it lacks none of the virtuosity that can be expected in all her works. Love explores secrets and crimes of the heart through an a...more

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Aug 06, 2011 Ddc2503 rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

My rating:

add to my books

This is a book club selection for August, 2006

The cook's soliloquies were somtimes too long and rambling. I did pick-up on her hint on Cosey's death, but thought I had "imagined" it until the end of the book, so was justly supprised at the ending.

Love

by Toni Morrison

Nobel Prize laureate Toni Morrison’s spellbinding new novel is a Faulknerian symphony of passion and hatred, power and perversity, color and class that spans three generations of black women in a fading be...more

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Mar 05, 2013 Niki Bounds rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book was pretty good. It kept my attention for the most part. Every now and then I would lose focus because sometimes, I felt like it was unorganized. That made it a little difficult to follow. I used online notes to help me understand exactly what was happening.
The meaning of the actual book though was extremely good. I enjoyed it very much. Toni Morrison's way of writing is unique. She gets very deep into it. Some people may take offense to how detailed she gets on certain topics. The t...more

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Nov 26, 2011 Josh Ang rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Toni Morrison's "Love" seems like a misnomer when considered against the ghastly concerns of the slim novel. There is the oppressive presence of the absent Bill Cosey, a man who creates havoc among a horde of women who occupy the centre of the story. The mysterious L frames the narrative and her omniscience provides a commentary on the feud between Christine and Heed (short for 'Heed the Night'). Christine's mother, May, is also a force to be contended with, as she joins in (and instigates) the...more Toni Morrison's "Love" seems like a misnomer when considered against the ghastly concerns of the slim novel. There is the oppressive presence of the absent Bill Cosey, a man who creates havoc among a horde of women who occupy the centre of the story. The mysterious L frames the narrative and her omniscience provides a commentary on the feud between Christine and Heed (short for 'Heed the Night'). Christine's mother, May, is also a force to be contended with, as she joins in (and instigates) the fray. Add to the mix a young stranger with a shady past and dubious intentions, Junior (or June for short), and we have an inter-generational cast of women who fall under the spell of Bill Cosey, within and after his lifetime. Conventional enough.

But as Morrison leads the reader into the narrative, little morsels are served and our views about the characters are constantly challenged and we reevaluate them. That Cosey is not just a black man but a rich owner of Cosey's Resort in depression-era Atlanta reveals an interesting take on power and race issues. That his bride Heed was his granddaughter's best friend and that he had practically yanked an 11 year-old into an illicit marriage raises concerns about child rape and the perversity of Bill Cosey. But the novel is not about him; it is about the women who deal with their relationships with him and how that informs their relationships with each other.

Morrison's novels are never easy to read (at least for this reader) and the density of her prose and deeply incisive writing bears re-reading to harvest the wealth of all she is saying. There is an orality to her writing that invites you to actually hear (and see) the characters as they speak, especially in L's narrative, which takes on the blend of folklore surrounding "Policeheads" that drown immoral and errant women off the beach and the history about the women and the Resort, which blur into one another, and in the end offers up more questions than answers to the narrative.

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Jan 14, 2009 Anne rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This idea is intriguing--a story about obsessive love, with a man who is no longer alive at the center. It is probably my literal minded-ness, but the fact that the magnetic object Bill Cosey, is only one letter away from Bill CosBy, and has a strangle plainness and lack of polysemy (cozy? costly? costly bill?) that many other characters' names do not follow, exacerbating the effect, all of which rather marred my ability to immerse in the book. I kept picturing the absent figure sitting at a tab...more

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Mar 24, 2012 Patrick rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The shifting perspective of the narrator is the most impressive part of the novel, as an added bonus, one of the narrator's is dead. The plot revolves around one character in the story, Bill Cosey. Of course, this is the only character who is not allowed to tell his story. Rather the reader receives the perspective of what Bill Cosey was to many different people. The reader is informed of the arc of his entire life by the perspectives of the people that were around him. The family rivalries and...more

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Nov 10, 2009 Patty rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2009, african-american-literature, american-literature, contemporary-fiction, family, dysfunctional-family, fiction, friendship, love, audiobook, mothers-and-daughters, relationships, women-writers, southern-fiction

This is my second Morrison novel in less than two months. I read A Mercy for my book group and realized that I found that novel challenging, but excellent. So I wanted to see how I would relate to another one of her novels. This one was read by Toni Morrison.

I am impressed by Morrison's ability to narrate her own novel. Reading for audio books is not easy, and I have listened to few authors who do a good job reading their books. Morrison's reading enhanced this book.

Love was not an easy story to...more

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May 12, 2012 Jamilla Rice rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

WOW. This was the best one in a while. Just the way it unfolds. The narrator. The perspectives of each of the women. The heroic nature of the boy. How we find out the true tragedy of the marriage and what ruined the relationship between Christine and Heed. Oh. I need to read it again just to bask in its warmth. That's what reading good literature is like, like sunbathing on a day with the perfect temperature, and a cool breeze, with your feet in the water and a drink in your hand.

Favorite/Memora...more

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Feb 17, 2010 Tracy Darity rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: tracy-s-book-club

"Love" was typical Toni Morrison. It starts out requiring 110% of your intellectual being, otherwise, you are lost from the gate. And that is what happened to me. This book was very confusing and hard to get into. The character depictions, the indepth descriptions of a oceanside town, the timelines, spirits from the sea claiming lives,etc was just too much to concentrate on. I often found myself going back and rereading passages to figure out relationhips amongst the characters. It wasn't until...more

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Oct 23, 2011 Louise Silk rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

I had the privilege of listening to Ms. Morrison read LOVE to me while I was driving. What a treat. She is as phenomenal reader as she is a writer.

The story is a brilliantly created structure where details are revealed slowly and beautifully. The writing is as smooth as butter.

This is about complicated relationships where each character experiences great pain throughout life that creates a warp understanding of love. Through the telling there is much to learn about the complicated relationships...more

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Mar 20, 2013 Karen Lacey rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

So how can I give Toni Morrison, Nobel Prize winner and literary genius, a 3 star rating? Because the book was like sludging through thigh-deep snow. It's beautiful, absolutely, and deep, without a doubt. In fact I have a dozen corners of my copy folded over and have underlined throughout for the sheer beauty of the work.

The problem is the book is 90% backstory. Each character reminiscences about his or her past and it's relationship to Mr. Cosey. I absolutely do not ever again want to read that...more

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Mar 31, 2013 Dorina rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: great-books

Apparently the story of a man and the women that surrounded him, it is in fact the story of two friends whose lives were destroyed by the dominant patriarchal figure. The man moves from central position to the periphery of the story, from being the protector to becoming the destroyer while the women add layer upon layer to the story, enriching it with every experience they live until you realize they are not just simple mirror characters but the very core of the story as it was always about them...more

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Nov 07, 2011 Jason rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This follow-up to Paradise suffered from the opposite problems that turned me off to that one. Where paradise was too dense and too spread out, this novel felt more like the first draft of a novel that was meant to be expanded and never was. It's a good story, but it's a story that doesn't go much deeper than its own surface, which is highly uncharacteristic of Morrison's work. Maybe she felt some of the same things about Paradise i mentioned in my review of that one (or other misgivings I didn'...more

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Sep 22, 2008 Jeannie-marie rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

She's a powerful writer. I love how she weaves these dysfuntional stories into one that has the simpliste clarifying themes. great story of how we hurt the ones we love the most.

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Feb 06, 2009 Darci rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Oh, my. What to say when I love an author and have blissful memories of drowning in her work in the past, only to be faced with a book I just couldn't get into? Perhaps I'm not smart enough (anymore?) to read Toni Morrison, but I had a hard time following this one. I felt like each time I picked up the book I had to remember where I was and who the characters were and how they were connected. The story line was ok, even mildly interesting, but I felt like I spent most of my time trying to figure...more

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Apr 23, 2010 V.C. V.C. rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

As much as I really admired Morrison's poetic, lyrical, and emotional prose, I really couldn't get into this novel. There was little to no characterization, and frankly, the story just wasn't interesting. At times it felt like Morrison was more interested with trying to make every word, description, and dialogue sound so poetic and deep and meaningful than actually telling a story. Because of that, it became far too tedious of a book to read, and far too dull as a novel. At the end, I just gave...more

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Mar 06, 2012 Liz Zubritsky rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The craftmanship of this book is almost beyond compare. The characters are exquisitely drawn, and we go deep into their souls. Too bad so many of their souls are such unpleasant places. This book tackles the subject of love, putting most of the emphasis on how it can be twisted into something disturbing. Very disturbing. Yet those scenes are portrayed with such skill, such eloquence, that they are almost lyrical. I was moved to tears, but I'd have a hard time going back to this book. It's not a...more

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Jun 30, 2011 Deb rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Men and women experience love and obsess about love in many, many different ways. Toni Morrison explores the multifaceted nature of love in this short but deftly written novel. The central figure is Bill Cosey, and yet he is already dead and gone when the story begins. Bill, a good bad man or a bad good man, is the object of desire, love, obsession for all the female characters. His actions for good and for bad determine the course of their lives. But he is revealed as a less than perfect idol,...more

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Sep 16, 2011 Lauryn rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: reviewed

Love and friendship are the focus of Toni Morrison’s 2003 novel, Love. With less attention paid to race relations and more on the relationship between men and women, and the impact that can have on the relationships between women, Morrison manages to explore one of her favorite subjects in great depth without completely abandoning the themes and style that helped to make her famous.

Heed and Christine were best friends as young children but by the time they reached their old age, they have been t...more

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About Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison (born Chloe Anthony Wofford), is an American author, editor, and professor who won the 1993 Nobel Prize in Literature for being an author "who in novels characterized by visionary force and poetic import, gives life to an essential aspect of American reality."
Her novels are known for their epic themes, vivid dialogue, and richly detailed African American characters; among the best k...more

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Quotes from Love

“Young people, Lord. Do they still call it infatuation? That magic ax that chops away the world in one blow, leaving only the couple standing there trembling? Whatever they call it, it leaps over anything, takes the biggest chair, the largest slice, rules the ground wherever it walks, from a mansion to a swamp, and its selfishness is its beauty. Before I was reduced to singsong, I saw all kinds of mating. Most are two-night stands trying to last a season. Some, the riptide ones, claim exclusive right to the real name, even though everybody drowns in its wake. People with no imagination feed it with sex—the clown of love. They don’t know the real kinds, the better kinds, where losses are cut and everybody benefits. It takes a certain intelligence to love like that—softly, without props. But the world is such a showpiece, maybe that’s why folks try to outdo it, put everything they feel onstage just to prove they can think up things too: handsome scary things like fights to the death, adultery, setting sheets afire. They fail, of course. The world outdoes them every time. While they are busy showing off, digging other people’s graves, hanging themselves on a cross, running wild in the streets, cherries are quietly turning from greed to red, oysters are suffering pearls, and children are catching rain in their mouths expecting the drops to be cold but they’re not; they are warm and smell like pineapple before they get heavier and heavier, so heavy and fast they can’t be caught one at a time. Poor swimmers head for shore while strong ones wait for lightning’s silver veins. Bottle-green clouds sweep in, pushing the rain inland where palm trees pretend to be shocked by the wind. Women scatter shielding their hair and men bend low holding the women’s shoulders against their chests. I run too, finally. I say finally because I do like a good storm. I would be one of those people in the weather channel leaning into the wind while lawmen shout in megaphones: ‘Get moving!” — 57 people liked it

“Do they still call it infatuation? That magic ax that chops away the world in one blow, leaving only the couple standing there trembling? Whatever they call it, it leaps over anything, takes the biggest chair, the largest slice, rules the ground wherever it walks, from a mansion to a swamp, and its selfishness is its beauty.... People with no imagination feed it with sex -- the clown of love. They don't know the real kinds, the better kinds, where losses are cut and everybody benefits. It takes a certain intelligence to love like that -- softly, without props.” — 12 people liked it

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BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1372676.Love?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1183058196l/1372676.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1372676.Love?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]Love by Toni Morrison[/url]

Love

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