Your Good Name

In my opinion Toni Morrison is not one of the few writers whom even everyday people know, meaning people who haven't studied literature or are not members of some literary organizaton themselves. It took even me by surprise that she won the Nobel Prize for Literature, but that's the kind of information book covers are eager to tell you. Morrison's Bluest Eye and Beloved were part of the feminist-minority literary education our university provided, and probably that's why I haven't read anything else by her for so many years. In the case of Love I didn't have too much information beforehand, so I could read it without prejudice, more or less. I came across it during my last library hunt and immediately decided to take it home.
The title Love itself is something that struck me with its verbal simplicity and semantic complexity. This is something I really appreciate in a book, and I also like the cover very much.
Love depicts a world of women, yet all these women, from wife to cook, employee to granddaughter are defined relative to the powerful male character, Bill Cosey, whom one character also calls Good Man. Cosey himself is dead at the time of the story but his portrait is still hanging on the wall over his used-to-be bed, as an omnipresent onlooker, just like a god.

I must admit it was a bit hard for me to follow the plot because Morrison is jumping back and forth in time, just like one does in her memories. According to the cover "Into a short narrative she packs mystery, suspense and a multi-stranded tale told with extraordinary deftness." The protagonists are Heed and Christine, old and fragile now but lifelong enemies. The day that irreversibly marked their fate was back in 1940 when Christine's grandpa, Bill Cosey first saw Heed and decided to buy him as a wife.
As the sub-titles suggest, chapter by chapter we see Cosey from a different angle (father, lover, portrait...), striving to get a deeper understanding of him. At the same time we are travelling through time in the memories of the Cosey girls, Christine's mother, May, the cook, L, the hotel receptionist, Vida, and even Junior, the representative of the present of the story. We learn about the jazz age, the Great Depression, segregation, racial riots as well as the possibilities of black women, of rape, crime, and the will to survive.
I don't consider myself a crusader of minority literature, more likely of female literature (whatever that means), but it was a good read and especially the last chapter where the story unfolds and the soul sisters let go of emotions. It's simply beautiful! And not overpoetized. (Sorry I won't go into detailed literary discussion and tear it to pieces.) I think I'm going to read more by her.

(Btw. this title also refers to a song from Monsoon Wedding.)