LOVE has 7 chapters: Portrait - Friend - Stranger - Benefactor - Lover - Husband - Guardian.
It centers around Bill Cosey, a highly respected and wealthy African American hotelier who at 52, married an 11 year old who also happened to be his granddaughter's best friend/playmate; Heed the Night. Now, to confront love/life, the women in his life have to first confront each other.
Excerpts #1:
Girls like the place a lot. Over iced tea with a clove in it, they join their friends to repeat what he said, describe what he did, and guess what he meant by any of it. Like...
He didn’t call me for three days and when I called him he wanted to get together right then.
See there? He wouldn’t do that if he didn’t want to be with you.
Oh, please. When I got there we had a long talk and for the first time he really listened to me.
Sure he did. Why not? All he had to do was wait till you shut up, then he could work his own tongue.
I thought he was seeing what’s her name?
No, they split. He asked me to move in.
Sign the paper first, honey.
I don’t want anybody but him.
It’s like that, huh?
Well, no joint accounts, hear? You want porgies or not?
Foolish. But they spice the lunch hour and lift the spirits of brokenhearted men eavesdropping at nearby tables.
Excerpts #2:
'As a child I was considered respectful; as a young woman I was called discreet. Later on I was thought to have the wisdom maturity brings. Nowadays silence is looked on as odd and most of my race has forgotten the beauty of meaning much by saying little. Now tongues work all by themselves with no help from the mind.'
'...Cursing meant assaulting an officer; yanking your arms when cuffed meant resisting arrest; throwing a cigarette too close to a police car meant conspiracy to commit arson; running across the street to get out of the way of mounted police meant obstructing traffic.'
'...The planners believed that dark people would do fewer dark things if there were twice as many streetlamps as anywhere else. Only in fine neighborhoods and the country were people entrusted to shadow. '
Quotes:
1. I have come to believe every family has a Dark and needs one. 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 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. They have time and convenience to honey-butter the wickedness they prefer.
2. A woman is an important somebody and sometime you win the triple crown: good food, good sex, and good talk. Most men settle for for any one, happy as a clam if they get two. But listen, let me tell you something. A good (wo)man is a good thing, but there is nothing in the world better than a good good woman. She can be your mother, your wife, your girlfriend, your sister, or somebody you work next to.
3. Like friendship, hatred needed more than physical intimacy; it wanted creativity and hard work to sustain itself.
4. Where there was music, there was money. Check the churches if you doubt me.
5. You can live with anything if you have what you can’t live without.
6. People with no imagination feed it with sex - the clown of love.
7. Ugly women know everything about beauty. They have to.
Toni Morrison is a great author with a bunch of awards on her shelf, including a Nobel and Pulitzer...but there's something about her writing I don't get, yet. Maybe I need to read more of her books.
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