Because we'd
read anything by Toni Morrison—but
this one was music on the page.
Jazz is set in motion by a
love triangle and a murder: Fifty-year old Joe Trace, who sells Cleopatra
beauty products, takes a teenage lover, and then kills her in a fit of passion
when she spurns him. Joe's wife, Violet, slashes the girl's face as she lies in
her casket. But Morrison gives us so much more than a story of love (or sex)
gone wrong, so much more than a story of forgiveness and healing. She gives us
the world of Harlem in the 1920s; she gives us memory, history, race and desire
entwined. The novel doesn't just evoke jazz; it
is
jazz, of the finest and most vibrant kind.
— Dawn Raffel
