The New York Review of Books
...Love may be about passion between men and women, or family ties, or the tenderness the elderly feel for the young about to make their own mistakes, but in the end it seems to have the most to say about how women love, which is perhaps different from the way men do. The novel is modest in length, but constantly suggestive, a beautiful, haunting work about two wasted lives that also mourns for a certain time in black live. — Darryl Pinckney
The New York Times
Like all of Morrison's best fiction, this is a village novel. Race and racism, ancillary concerns in Love for the most part, throw the small groups she writes about back upon one another, steeping their passions. Even when the setting is contemporary, Morrison's books feel old-fashioned, set in a world where the perpetual distraction of the media hasn't diluted people's fascination with their neighbors, where the misadventures of J.Lo and P. Diddy don't siphon off attention from the scandal next door. Morrison is, as always, interested in the face-off between the respectable and the not, between the clean, orderly, responsible citizens of Silk, the town where the Cosey women live, and the unchaste, shoeless ne'er-do-wells of neighborhoods like the Settlement and Up Beach, where one of the Cosey women started out. — Laura Miller
Publishers Weekly
More a tapestry than a novel, Morrison's newest weaves the past into the present using perspectives as threads and voices as color. The author's soft voice forces listeners to pay close attention; even so, the novel's complex construction, coupled with her hushed tones, will have listeners reaching for "rewind" to capture the subtle details so important in Morrison's compositions. This audiobook is best suited for those prepared to concentrate closely and wait patiently as layer builds upon layer. The story opens in the 1930s on the Florida coast when L, who narrates the story from beyond the grave, sees Cosey holding his wife, Julia, in the ocean; L feels such waves of tenderness radiating off him that she signs on to his life forever and becomes both maid and chef at his hotel. The novel winds through the lives of Cosey's other women, including his granddaughter Christine and her best friend, Heed the Night Johnson. Cosey twirls them all around his little finger, abruptly and unapologetically marrying the 12-year-old Heed. Thread by thread, the novel builds as Cosey's women glitter around him, even after his death. Morrison leaves readers with the powerful realization: neither good nor evil, Cosey was simply a man. Simultaneous release with the Knopf hardcover (Forecasts, Sept. 1, 2003). (Oct.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
Library Journal
When gorgeous and amoral Junior arrives in the Southern coastal town of Silk, chance brings her to a deadly crossroads. She talks herself into a job at the center of a love/hate feud between two elderly women, the remaining members of a clan who once defined Silk's African American elite. The tension involves the late Bill "Papa" Cosey and the riches he achieved during his heyday in the 1940s and 1950s as proprietor of a fabulous resort. Along the way, he obtained the intense love of many women, including granddaughter Christine, lower-class child bride Heed, and spectacular "sporting woman" Celestial. Eight compact chapters named for aspects of Cosey's character ("Benefactor," "Lover," "Guardian," and so on) present the shifting perspectives of those entranced by this charismatic, secretive man long after his death. Nobel Laureate Morrison's latest is a vividly narrated exploration of the pleasures, burdens, and distortions of obsessive devotion. Given the book's brevity, the dialog must carry the story convincingly-and, of course, Morrison is a master at this. Certainly, this book won't disappoint readers already familiar with Morrison and will serve as a good introduction for those new to her. Highly recommended. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 6/1/03.]-Starr E. Smith, Fairfax Cty. P.L., VA Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
A black patriarch's obsessive domination of the many women in his life is relentlessly scrutinized in the 1993 Nobel winner's intricately patterned eighth novel. An opening monologue spoken by an unidentified elderly woman reminisces about the once-vibrant, now-defunct Florida Hotel and Resort (a "playground" for affluent black people) owned by the late Bill Cosey: a rags-to-riches millionaire revered for his benevolence and his ability to attract and possess beautiful women. We're soon introduced to Junior Viviane, a runaway and reform-school veteran who answers an ad for a "Companion, Secretary" placed by Cosey's (much younger) widow Heed (born, wretchedly poor, as Heed the Night Johnson). Then, in a gorgeous deployment of enigmatic flashbacks, Morrison focuses in turn on elderly May Cosey, the widow of Cosey's son Billy Boy; May's daughter Christine, the old man's only surviving blood relative, who had fled the Resort and forfeited her birthright; and the silent, judging presence who has observed them all: Cosey's legendary chef, known only as L. As Junior expertly seduces Romen, the adolescent grandson of Sandler and Vida Gibbons (both of whom had been employed by Cosey), Christine's rage, May's paranoid fear of racial unrest as a threat to her security ("for years, she hoarded and buried, and preserved and stole"), and the frail heed's stranglehold on the Cosey property and history, all meld, as the novel's climactic events deepen the enigma of Cosey (who's present only in retrospect): a fructifying paternal figure, and perhaps also an unconscionable predator (or, as L. wryly concludes, "an ordinary man ripped, like the rest of us, by wrath and love"). Incorporating elements fromearlier Morrison novels (notably Jazz, Paradise, and Sula), Love is an elegantly shaped epic of infatuation, enslavement, and liberation: a rich symbolic mystery that grows steadily more eloquent and disturbing as its meanings clarify and grip the reader. One of Morrison's finest, and a heartening return to Nobel-worthy form. First printing of 500,000; author tour
