Aug 8

Aug 8 Jazz

Author: Toni Morrison
Publisher: Vintage
Goodreads | The StoryGraph

Click above to buy this book from my Bookshop.org shop, which supports independent bookstores (not Amazon). You can also find it via your favorite indie bookstore here.

Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.

Cover Description

In the winter of 1926, when everybody everywhere sees nothing but good things ahead, Joe Trace, middle-aged door-to-door salesman of Cleopatra beauty products, shoots his teenage lover to death. At the funeral, Joe’s wife, Violet, attacks the girl’s corpse. This passionate, profound story of love and obsession brings us back and forth in time, as a narrative is assembled from the emotions, hopes, fears, and deep realities of black urban life.

Review

“Daylight slants like a razor cutting the buildings in half. In the top half I see looking faces and it’s not easy to tell which are people, which the work of stonemasons. Below is shadow where any blasé thing takes place: clarinets and lovemaking, fists and the voices of sorrowful women. A city like this one makes me dream tall and feel in on things.”

It’s hard to give my thoughts on a Toni Morrison novel and feel like I have anything to say that hasn’t been said a hundred times before. I still find it difficult to believe that she was a real person who was literally, truly just this talented. Where does that come from? How does that happen?

Jazz wasn’t my favorite of her novels so far, but I did still enjoy it. Written not just to mimic jazz music but to embody it, Jazz is a novel mainly about three characters: Violet, her husband Joe, and the young girl named Dorcas whom Joe has an affair with. The story begins on the day of Dorcas’s funeral — Joe shot and killed her rather than lose her to disinterest. Violet shows up at the funeral to cut the dead girl’s face. From there, we sweep backward and forward in time to learn about not only these characters, but those who raised them and those around them. And of course, the prose is exquisite.

It did take me quite a few weeks to read this one, because I had a really really busy few weeks at work, and it requires a bit more mental energy than I had to give. It’s not linear or straightforward; the narrative darts and sweeps and circles. Also, I’ve gotten used to listening along with Toni’s novels — she narrates her own audiobooks. But I was devastated to learn that the only audiobook version of this book is abridged. WHO ABRIDGES TONI MORRISON? WHY? (Especially the one meant to embody jazz music??) So obviously I opted to read without audio so I could experience the whole novel — but I really missed her voice in my ear. But at the end of the day, I ended the book in awe once again.

Onward in my Morrison journey — next up is Paradise!