Set primarily in Harlem in 1926, when jazz was bursting forth from the traditions of gospel and blues, this 1992 novel is one of Morrison's most experimental and least accessible. Written from multiple points of view, it uses the patterns of jazz itself for its structure. A series of overarching themes connects the work, but these are seen in individual characterizations and episodes which flash backward and forward, twisting and turning as they connect, misconnect, change, and ultimately create a unique world larger than the sum of its individual parts.

Focusing primarily on middle-aged Violet Trace, her fifty-year-old husband Joseph, and Dorcas Manfred, his teenage lover, whom he believes shares his passion, Morrison explores issues of love and fear, sex and obsession, violence and passivity, and strength and dependence, in addition to her big issues of color and gender. At the outset of the novel, Joseph has murdered Dorcas, fearing that his love for her will never be as great as it is at the moment just before her death. His wife Violet, distraught, is forcibly removed from Dorcas's wake, and though she believes herself to be strong and indestructible, she shows her own vulnerability, sometimes seeing "that other Violet" who inhabits her soul.

Gradually, the individual stories of Violet, Joe, their families, and Dorcas and her family, some members of whom go back even into the 1800s, flesh out the characterizations upon which this novel depends. For much of the novel, however, the reader must be patient, not sure exactly how all these characters are connected to each other, like the most experimental improvisations in jazz. Gradually, they do connect, and gradually the theme of redemption emerges triumphant.

Brilliant in its construction and thematic development, the novel requires the reader to make many connections which other authors (and Morrison in most of her other novels) make or suggest as a matter of course. Her complex, spiraling structure (which Faulkner also often employs) in Beloved, Song of Solomon, and even an early novel like Sula, for example, seems more effective in these, perhaps because these novels have smaller casts of characters, and the importance of particular episodes and the relationships of many characters are clearer. For me, this was a novel to appreciate, rather than to love. n Mary Whipple

Sula
Beloved
Song of Solomon
Tar Baby (Contemporary Fiction, Plume)
Conversations with Toni Morrison (Literary Conversations Series)

Sometimes these reviews are based more upon context (what else you recently read) rather than upon the reader's own tastes. I will try to avoid allowing this review from being tainted from the magic presented by other recently read novels.

For inexplicable reasons, I read this book within weeks of reading other African American great novels: "Their Eyes are Watching God" by Zora Neale Hurston; "The Color Purple" by Alice Walker; and, "Go Tell it on the Mountain" by James Baldwin. This book, quite simply, is not in their league. It does not offer a love story equal to "Their Eyes." It does not offer a historical perspective of the tortured characters like "Go Tell" and does not deliver dialogue like "Their God" or "Color Purple."

But, then again - what book does rival the three mentioned above? The other three are universally acclaimed novels which many critics list not only among the greatest African American novels, not only the greatest American novels, but among the greatest novels of any culture ever written. So, my context may well be unfortunately biased.

But, this novel has highlights - like the beginning of the second chapter - where her prose is so lush and precise and exquisite that she reminds me of Adrienne Rich - a prose writing poet. Morrison, in certain passages of this book, is a poet. Throughout this book, she is an extremely talented novelist.

I will eventually read her other classics, "Beloved" and "Song of Solomon." And, as I have been told they surpass this book - which is quite an achievement - I can never wonder why she won the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Without a doubt, I know when I pick up a Morrison novel that I will be reading a deep and complexly woven story that forces you to think about life, all the while enjoying the storyline for what it is. Jazz is no exception.

Using recursive narration, we are able to let the tale unfold one chapter at a time. As we learn more about a character we move onto another, yet must look back a ways into their past to understand who and where they come from (recursive narration), before we can rejoin the story. This style of writing is my favorite style, something Faulkner uses heavily, and I can never get enough of it.

Seeing Violet become something, seemingly, not who she is and then letting it wrap full around into a mature and complex character is amazing. Seeing Joe fall in love three times, one to someone not his wife, and yet still be able to see what made him move, what made him tick ("there is only one apple") creates a balanced person, one who is neither perfect nor flawed, but one that is real and human.

Morrison does this time and again, using her recursive approach to shed light onto real and human characters, utilizing her writing to make a novel that the reader can not only enjoy and feel, but one that makes the reader respect what has been created. Five stars for Morrison as well as for Jazz, a most definite recommend to any potential readers.

Jazz is an interesting novel, and in some ways the characters ring truer than in her most acclaimed work, Beloved. The story unfolds in a totally brilliant way, we see the key event in the narrative from multiple points of view, and the character's perspective from many points in time. The narration is also deliberately self-conscious and at times humorous, though I was annoyed by her stream of consciousness at the book's end. Still, Morrison does an excellent job weaving character, moral ambiguity, violence, race, and sociology in a vivid mosaic of Harlem life.

Jazz was a very interesting novel to read. its theme of violence makes the story very interesting. Morrisons interweaves allusions to racial violence into her story with a neitral tone that lets the historical facts speak for themselves. her descriptions of scenes are often filled with violence as she discusses buildings which a cut but a razorlike line of sunlight. even her narrative is violently constructed, but it keeps you interested in whats going to happen next. Toni morrison tells us what is is to be a woman so that we may know what is to be a man. I love the theme of jealousy, murder, passion, and sex. I suggest further readings- Love, Beloved