Reader Score
86%
86% of readers
recommend this book
"As rich in themes and poetic images as her Pulitzer Prize-winning Beloved.... Morrison conjures up the hand of slavery on Harlem's jazz generation. The more you listen, the more you crave to hear." --Glamour
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 novel "transforms a familiar refrain of jilted love into a bold, sustaining time of self-knowledge and discovery. Its rhythms are infectious" (People).
"The author conjures up worlds with complete authority and makes no secret of her angst at the injustices dealt to Black women." --The New York Times Book Review
Danez Smith is a writer and poet.
.@Morgannapple on Toni Morrison’s “Jazz” is a must read https://t.co/aq0YsZd5Hr
Kaitlyn Greenidge is an editor and author.
“Look out for a faithful man near fifty. Because he has never messed w/ another woman; bc he selected that young girl to love, he thinks he is free. Not free to break loaves or feed the world on a fish. Nor to raise the war dead, but free to do something wild.”JAZZ, Toni Morrison
"JAZZ is one of my top five novels of all time. There may be more esteemed Morrison books but that one dug deep. Gorgeous prose, a riveting storyline, unforgettable characters. Its first paragraph may be my favorite novel opening in all of literature."
"She may be the last classic American writer, squarely in the tradition of Poe, Melville, Twain and Faulkner." --Newsweek
"[A] masterpiece. . . . She has moved from strength to strength until she has reached the distinction of being beyond comparison." --Entertainment Weekly
"Thrillingly written . . . seductive. . . . Some of the finest lyric passages ever written in a modern novel." --Chicago Sun-Times
"A compelling blend of heart and language. . . . Resounds with passion." --The Boston Globe
"Marvelous. . . . Morrison is perhaps the finest novelist of our time." --Vogue
"The author conjures up worlds with complete authority and makes no secret of her angst at the injustices dealt to black women." --Edna O'Brien, The New York Times Book Review
"She captures that almost indistinguishable mixture of the anxiety and rapture of expectation--that state of desire where sin is just another word for appetite." --San Francisco Chronicle
"As rich in themes and poetic images as her Pulitzer Prize-winning Beloved. . . . Morrison conjures up the hand of slavery on Harlem's jazz generation. The more you listen, the more you crave to hear." --Glamour
"She is the best writer in America. Jazz, for sure; but also Mozart." --John Leonard, National Public Radio
"A masterpiece. . . . A sensuous, haunting story of various kinds of passion. . . . Mesmerizing." --Cosmopolitan
"Lyrically brooding. . . . One accepts the characters of Jazz as generalized figures moving rhythmically in the narrator's mind." --The New York Times
"Transforms a familiar refrain of jilted love into a bold, sustaining time of self-knowledge and discovery. Its rhythms are infectious." --People