Pamela Norris
Chaining The Soul
Love
By Toni Morrison
Chatto & Windus 217pp £16.99
TONI MORRISON HAS written eloquently about the legacy of slavery for black people in North America. In a series of novels, beginning with The Bluest Eye (1970), she examines the damage inflicted by white slave-owners. the impact of segregation, and the struggle of black communities to find their place in American society. The focus of her enquiry is the human heart - its possibilities, contradictions and failures. Drawing on religious myth and history and employing a poet's dexterity with language, she explores the emotional effects of injury and displacement, and the difficulty of evaluating the behaviour of people acting under extreme conditions. In Beloved, a mother kills her daughter to save her from slavery, a tragedy which, Morrison suggests, cannot be judged according to everyday rules of right and wrong. In jazz, a middle-aged man shoots his young lover, but issues of race and identity are deeply implicated in the fatality, and affect the reader's assessment of the murder.
Questions of good and evil are again to the fore in Morrison's latest novel, Love, which tells the story of Bill Cosey., and the rise and fall of Cosev's Hotel and Resort, the 'best-known vacation spot for coloured folk on the East Coast'. When the novel begins, Cosey is long
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
London's East End was long synonymous with poverty and sweatshops, while its West End was associated with glamour and high society. But when it came to the fashion industry, were the differences really so profound?
Sharman Kadish - Winkle-pickers & Bum Freezers
Sharman Kadish: Winkle-pickers & Bum Freezers - Fashion City: How Jewish Londoners Shaped Global Style; Fashion City: ...
literaryreview.co.uk
In 1982, Donald Rumsfeld presented Saddam Hussein with a pair of golden spurs. Two decades later he was dropping bunker-busting bombs on his palaces.
Where did the US-Iraqi relationship go wrong?
Rory Mccarthy - The Case of the Vanishing Missiles
Rory Mccarthy: The Case of the Vanishing Missiles - The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the United States and the ...
literaryreview.co.uk
Barbara Comyns was a dog breeder, a house painter, a piano restorer, a landlady... And a novelist.
@nclarke14 on the lengths 20th-century women writers had to go to make ends meet:
Norma Clarke - Her Family & Other Animals
Norma Clarke: Her Family & Other Animals - Barbara Comyns: A Savage Innocence by Avril Horner
literaryreview.co.uk