The day she walked the streets of Silk, a chafing wind kept the temperature low and the sun was helpless to move outdoor thermometers more than a few degrees above freezing. Tiles of ice had formed at the shoreline and, inland, the thrown-together houses on Monarch Street whined like puppies. Ice slick gleamed, then disappeared in the early evening shadow, causing the sidewalks she marched along to undermine even an agile tread, let alone one with a faint limp. She should have bent her head and closed her eyes to slits in that weather, but being a stranger, she stared wide-eyed at each house, searching for the address that matched the one in the advertisement: One Monarch Street. Finally she turned into a driveway where Sandler Gibbons stood in his garage door ripping the seam from a sack of Ice-Off. He remembers the crack of her heels on concrete as she approached; the angle of her hip as she stood there, the melon sun behind her, the garage light in her face. He remembers the pleasure of her voice when she asked for directions to the house of women he has known all his life.

"You sure?" he asked when she told him the address.

She took a square of paper from a jacket pocket, held it with ungloved fingers while she checked, then nodded.

Sandler Gibbons scanned her legs and reckoned her knees and thighs were stinging from the cold her tiny skirt exposed them to. Then he marveled at the height of her bootheels, the cut of her short leather jacket. At first he'd thought she wore a hat, something big and fluffy to keep her ears and neck warm. Then he realized that it was hair-blown forward by the wind, distracting him from her face. She looked to him like a sweet child, fine-boned, gently raised but lost.

"Cosey women," he said. "That's their place you looking for. It ain't been number one for a long time now, but you can't tell them that. Can't tell them nothing. It 1410 or 1401, probably."

Now it was her turn to question his certainty.

"I'm telling you," he said, suddenly irritable-the wind, he thought, tearing his eyes. "Go on up thataway. You can't miss it 'less you try to. Big as a church."

She thanked him but did not turn around when he hollered at her back, "Or a jailhouse."

Sandler Gibbons didn't know what made him say that. He believed his wife was on his mind. She would be off the bus by now, stepping carefully on slippery pavement until she got to their driveway. There she would be safe from falling because, with the forethought and common sense he was known for, he was prepared for freezing weather in a neighborhood that had no history of it. But the "jailhouse" comment meant he was really thinking of Romen, his grandson, who should have been home from school an hour and a half ago. Fourteen, way too tall, and getting muscled, there was a skulk about him, something furtive that made Sandler Gibbons stroke his thumb every time the boy came into view. He and Vida Gibbons had been pleased to have him, raise him, when their daughter and son-in-law enlisted. Mother in the army; father in the merchant marines. The best choice out of none when only pickup work (housecleaning in Harbor for the women, hauling road trash for the men) was left after the cannery closed. "Parents idle, children sidle," his own mother used to say. Getting regular yard work helped, but not enough to keep Romen on the dime and out of the sight line of ambitious, under-occupied police. His own boyhood had been shaped by fear of vigilantes, but dark blue uniforms had taken over posse work now. What thirty years ago was a one-sheriff, one-secretary department was now four patrol cars and eight officers with walkie-talkies to keep the...

 

Bill Cosey's male magnetism attracts the women who inhabit Morrison's pages. Some commanding, some flighty, all are drawn to Cosey's passion. Once, Cosey's Hotel and Resort on the beach was the place for "colored folk on the East Coast." Now, the run-down structure is home to his contentious widow and granddaughter. Through a series of retrospectives, the mystery of the questionable circumstances surrounding Cosey's death and his role in each woman's life gradually unfolds. Morrison confronts issues of race in America, particularly the deep disappointment of many African-Americans in the face of ineffectual civil rights legislation. Aching with melancholy for another, better, time, a time left in a troubled past, Morrison's novel combines elegance of language with a lush, luxurious reading to make "must listening." S.J.H. Winner of AUDIOFILE Earphones Award (c) AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine

 

"Love seduces with Toni Morrison's signature lush prose and colorfully complex, textured scenes of human longing, scheming, suffering, and loss."

 

"It's a dense, dark star of a novel, seemingly eccentric, secretly shapely, ... and with Morrison writing at the top of her game."

 

"Haunting . . . In lyrical flashbacks, Morrison slowly, teasingly reveals the glories and horrors of the past . . . Morrison has crafted a gorgeous, stately novel."

 

"Love is a profound novel. As a vivid painter of human emotions, Morrison is without peer, her impressions rendered in an exquisitely metaphoric but comfortably open style."

 

"A gorgeous deployment of enigmatic flashbacks...Love is an elegantly shaped epic of infatuation, enslavement, and liberation: a rich and heartening return to Nobel-worthy form."

 

Love by Toni Morrison
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